John Michener United for Life & Author of Overcoming the Dark Side of the Prolife Movement

Pro-Life Radio is a pre-recorded program paid for by Pro-Life Radio. Preserving the sanctity of life in Florida. A loud voice for the unborn. This is Pro-Life Radio with your hosts, Vicky and Bruce Cherry. And welcome to Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday night, Christmas time. Yay. I’ve got my Santa Claus hat on. Happy birthday, Jesus. Yeah. And Vicky’s got her Santa Claus hat on, her blingy Santa Claus hat on. Blingy. And we start everything. We’ve got a great guest who’s been on the show numerous times, John Mishener. We’re going to get with John in just a second here. But first, we always start off with Jeremiah 1-5 and prayer. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet to the nations.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you once again humbly, and we lay— this ministry at your feet— and we ask you to please bless this ministry, bless this show, bless our guests, and all who hear this show. Let us be fruitful in changing hearts and minds about the sanctity of life, about how precious it is, about how none of us— No human—can ever fully understand. has the right to disqualify something that you have ordained to live— a child that you have ordained to live a life that you have given God. Thank you for this opportunity. We pray for blessings to keep this show on the air and to keep this ministry funded. And we pray for John and his ministry and for him to be fruitful in educating folks and just sharing truth.

And God, we thank you for this opportunity. And we thank you for all who hear this show. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Amen. Welcome to the show again, John Mishner, author of the book, ‘Overcoming the Dark Side of the Pro-Life Movement.’ John, welcome to the show. Hey, it’s good to be back, guys. I guess we haven’t talked since back in the spring. Yeah, it’s been a bit. You were our speaker at one of our dinners. It was our Love, Life, Lunch, and Learn. Yes. I’ll say that five times really fast. That would be a good tongue twister, wouldn’t it? It is a good tongue twister. There you go. John, how are you doing? How’s the family? Oh, family’s doing well.

We’re scattered all over the country pursuing various adventures. The girls are growing up. In fact, you know, our kids are now at that age where we don’t consider ourselves full-time parents anymore. We’re now consultants. No, okay. I think you guys have been there for a while, so that’s been kind of nice. It’s freed up a little more time and energy to do some other things. I think that’s part of the reason I was able to finally get that book written last year because I was able to step away from the stress of full-time parenting and ministry and go, okay, let’s just set aside a few months and get this thing knocked out. That’s right and in fact, I was going to say, you basically kind of took the summer off, didn’t you?

Yeah, I did. I just turned 50 years old this year, and I finished that book, and we kind of finished being full-time parents, and I went, you know what? Right now is the time. Let’s go on sabbatical. After about 15 to 18 years of full-time ministry, I’m like, let’s just take a break. So this summer, I kind of put the phone on Do Not Disturb. We mothballed the house. We left the window open for the cat. And we laughed. We drove 2,000 miles away to the Gulf of Maine and lived by the ocean all summer. Oh, wow. helped in the tourist industry. We were tour guides. And on the days we were off, we became tourists and we went hiking every day. And it was strange. It was surreal.

Because I was not looking at the phone, I didn’t look at Facebook, I was deleting the news, I was completely unplugged, and it was really, really nice. I do have a question for you, John. Yeah, go ahead. Um, I don’t know if y’all remember, listeners, that John loved to wear flip flops. Are you wearing your flip-flops today? I do not wear flip-flops. Sandals. I wear handcrafted leather sandals like our Lord and Master would have worn every day. I’ve been wearing them for 20 years. And yes, I wore them in Maine because in Maine in summer, it’s beautiful up there. You can wear sandals every day. Thanks for watching! Are you wearing them today? I have them in the car. It was 30 degrees when I got up, and I had to scrape ice off the window.

But this afternoon, I’ll be wearing my sandals. There you go. That’s so funny that you remembered that. Well, not only that, but our good friend, our mutual friend, Paul Blair, Pastor Paul Blair, reminds us about you and the sandals. Paul last evening so yeah yeah he loves that story he does he does so okay so you took summer it’s interesting that you took the summer off and you went to Maine I know Maine’s a beautiful state, but a lot of conservative Christians consider Maine to be behind enemy lines. So did you have a lot of opportunities to share faith and share truth with the people you were tour guiding? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It is a very interesting state. It’s actually a red state. It is Republican-controlled.

The grassroots people there are very conservative, like we would be in our state. You know, they have open carry laws and things like that. But so it’s a red state, but in some of the urban areas it’s very blue. However, the nice thing is we were in a tourist area, so we were meeting people from all over the country, uh, coming there on vacation. As a tour guide, I got the opportunity to weave all kinds of stories into what I was sharing with people. For example, I would point out on the hiking trail. The the cairns that point the way and I would relate that to Hebrew stones of memory and talk about how it’s by God’s help that we get where we’re going in life and find the true path and I was always weaving stuff like that into the stories, and that seemed to go very well.

Well, you know. Thank you. I know you have a servant’s heart. And I find that it’s so intriguing to me that you took the family and you guys all were serving others for your summer vacation. That is very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Tell us about some of the recent stuff that’s going on in Colorado. Well, okay, so this was the end of my sabbatical, and I got to tell you, it was a rude awakening. So I wake up one morning. It happens to be September the 10th. And I. Commute from Ocean level to the airport in Bangor, I get on a plane and fly up to, I think it was Chicago or someplace, and then I get on another plane and I fly up to… Denver, Colorado.

So I’m now over 4,000 miles away, and I’m a mile high when I started out at ocean level. And I’m still pretty unplugged. So I don’t start watching the news and sort of catching up on what’s going on in the world until I land in Denver. On September the 10th, and what’s the top headline? Charlie Kirk. Execute it. Shot in the neck. Mm-hmm. And I’m going, no. freaking way. Because the end of my sabbatical was going to go to the Truth and Liberty Conference where Charlie Kirk was our featured speaker the very next day. Day. He was killed 24 hours before he was going to be. With me and all my friends at this conference. Mm-hmm. So that was a massive shock to everybody there. The conference went forward as was planned.

And then the following week, I began training. college students. in their school of political science. And our plan that very next week was to go onto the local university campus and do Charlie Kirk style outreach. and evangelism. and talking with students. So I was really nervous about how that was going to go. with my students. But they were fired up in the wake of that bloodshed to get out there. and talk to students. So we ended up having hundreds of evangelical conversations that next week on campus, and it went really, really well. I was so proud of their courage. To get back involved. But that’s what took me to Colorado. And then, of course, before I took the break, I was down in Florida three or four times this year.

I was down there to help with the ballot initiative that had to be defeated. Then I was down there working with you guys for a training session. And right before I started my sabbatical, I was down in Tallahassee. And went and met with some of the staff of Governor DeSantis. And we were able to deliver to him a briefing. Explaining. How and why he could use the power of the executive branch in his authority to actually shut down the abortion death camps in Florida. And how he could lead the legislature to abolish abortion in Florida. It’s a shame. It’s a crying shame that Florida has, I don’t know, how many dozens of death camps open when it’s controlled. The whole state’s controlled by pro-life Republicans, overwhelming majorities from two-thirds.

To three quarters of your states, controlled by pro-life Republicans, I believe we have millions of babies out there. I believe we have more than any other state. It’s like 50 something, yeah. It’s insane. Now the number, let’s be fair, the number has decreased, but the number of abortions, it’s hard to track because of the abortion pill now. So you’re not having as many abortions, but you’ve got women here in Florida ordering the abortion pill and having it sent. You know, doing the abortion in their homes now. And that’s happening in every state. But on top of that, you’ve also got the freestanding death camps. Yeah. So the numbers are just through the roof in Florida compared to other states and even other red states. A question about when you met with DeSantis.

Um, and you talked about the, because I know Tom Vail, he’s one of our good, used to be the co-host here. And, you know, he has going around the state with the postcards and sending them about him shutting down these places. What was his reaction? What kind of a, you know? What was his thought? How did he react to you saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got executive power?’ He’s a lawyer. He’s a very experienced, very bright lawyer. He has to know he has that power. Yeah, but we didn’t even get to meet with him. We only met with staffers. I mean, at least we got to talk to real people. You know, and we asked for a review by their legal team of the briefing that we presented that went through the logical.

Legal arguments for how he could shut these things down. But even if he were too cowardly to shut them down through his own executive authority, he could at least use the bully pulpit and his leadership to tell the legislature what they should do in statute. But he doesn’t even do that. He stays away from the whole thing and doesn’t dirty his hands with those details. He just stands by and says, ‘I’m pro-life.’ Yeah, but what are you doing to save lives? I haven’t seen him or any other Republican. Do anything that would actually save a life. Yeah. We’re getting very close to a break here. Bruce. Okay. And I’m just, I was kind of thinking about what John’s saying.

And, you know, from my time in Florida politics, you know, it’s said that a politician feels their main job is to win that next election. and it shouldn’t be their main job is to serve the people and serve God’s people. So, Yep, it’s time for a break. We’ll be right back with more Pro-Life Radio with our guest John Mishner, author, abortion abolitionist, and all-around great guy and pastor. And we’ll talk some more with John here coming up in just a bit. Did I just promote him? I don’t know, John. Is Bruce telling things that are in the future? There we go. All right, we’ll be right back with Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday night on AM 950, FM 94. 9, The Answer. Okay. All right.

John, I don’t know why I threw pastor in there, but you have preached, correct? All right. I actually am a traditional pastor, if we correctly define terms. There we go. So when we come back, I’d like for you to, yes, definitely. Because the word pastor comes from pastoral, and it means to take care of the sheep. So the biblical… office of pastor is also translated shepherd. or elder. And they are tasked with minding the souls and the well-being of the local church. John, hold on to that because I always say the best radio takes place during the commercial. So when we come back, I’m going to touch on that. Vicky’s going to bring us back. No, no, no. Save it for another time. Save it for another time? Okay. Let’s go back to talking about the issues. Okay. All right. The next question we have for the next segment, but I think we touched on it already, speaking of Florida state politics, why have we not been able to criminalize abortion in Florida? So do we still want to touch on that? Absolutely, absolutely. We’re going to dive into that. Okay, Vicky, you bring us back. I’ll have the question. There we go. Okay, we’re coming back in three, two, one.

And welcome back to Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday evening. I’m Vicky Cherry. Across from me is my very handsome husband, Bruce. And he looks totally adorable in his little Santa Claus hat. You know, I can see my reflection in the glass to the studio here, and it reminds me of the Santa Claus pajamas we have at home with Santa on it. I wore them to work the other day. I know you did. I know, yeah. They’re black Santas, by the way. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Anyway. With us on the line, we have John Menschner. He is just an amazing, um, knowledge full of knowledge about, um, the legislative stuff, everything to do with ending abortion. Yeah, exactly. And as we were talking, John, we were talking about your time in Tallahassee with the Florida legislature and politics.

Why have we not been able to criminalize abortion in Florida? You know, that is the $10 million question, isn’t it? And you sort of hinted at it right before the break when you said, ‘a politician’s first job is to get reelected.’ There’s a lot of things that go into this dynamic, but if we have to point the finger and say, ‘what is the major, major obstacle to getting this done?’ It would, I think, be the massive influence of lobbyists. There’s so much money that gets poured into a campaign. It’s one thing for you to walk in as a single citizen and talk to your representative and say, hey, I want you to criminalize abortion. But when a lobbyist steps in with a check for.

ten thousand dollars or seven thousand five hundred dollars or whatever it is that’s the max they can give and guarantees more. from their organization through various channels. then they’re going to listen to that guy. If you think back to 2022, That’s when the Dobbs opinion was going to overturn Roe v. Wade. And remember, there was a leak. They didn’t surprise us with that. We knew it was coming. And I think that that gave an opportunity for all of these powerful, influential organizations and lobbyists to kind of get their ducks in a row. And think about their strategy. So one of the things that happened in 2022. And this is just an example, mind you, of the stuff that’s going on continually, week in and week out.

I’m just going to give you this one glaring example of what happened in 2022. There were a bunch of really powerful lobbyists that got together and formed a consortium. They said, we’re going to… pool our resources and our influence and we’re going to speak with one really loud voice. And what they did is they drafted a letter. That was addressed to every state legislator in the United States. Now, I’m going to quote to you from this letter. Well, let me set it up a little bit further: They’re 76. Signers. To this letter. This is big-time influence, okay? Now, let me quote you from the letter. We will continue to oppose legislative and policy initiatives that criminalize women who seek abortion. We call upon all legislators to stand with us.

We ask you to continue to act with love and compassion. towards women. We urge you to reject any measure. that might come up that would criminalize women who have abortions. as national and state organizations representing tens of millions. Across the country. Let us be clear. We state unequivocally that we do not support any measure. Seeking to criminalize or punish women. and we stand firmly opposed. against penalties. Turning women who have abortions into criminals is not the way. That’s bold. That’s underlined. Super massive influence in this letter. Now, these are powerful, right? Very influential voices. Now, I don’t have a staff and I don’t have intern right now because I just got off sabbatical. So I didn’t want to pour eight hours into this project.

So I just did like 30 minutes of quick AI searching on these organizations. And I didn’t even look up all 76. I looked up less than half. And in just a half an hour, I found $155 million in annual revenue from these organizations who signed the letters. So money talks. And these state legislators have listened and they’ve obeyed. Right, not one single state in the union has completely criminalized the commission of abortion. And even in the red Republican-controlled states, just like the 14 or so that say they have had a ban on abortion, they’ve actually only criminalized it for a small handful of abortion doctors. So I know you’re dying to know who these are. Lobbyists are those who have so much influence.

So let me tell you about some of them, the biggest and most powerful. Organizations on the list. Dates all the way back to 1973. And if you remember… That’s Roe v. Wade here. Mm-hmm. So they have over 3,000 nonprofit partners. And they have affiliated political action groups. In all 50 states. In other words, they have people who are at the state capitol, telling legislators what to do on a regular basis. So this is a huge powerhouse. Now, the second most powerful signer on the letter. They boasted $46 million in revenue. In their most recent annual report. Now, this organization… Obviously, has a director and they have a modest staff. So where does that $46 million go? Well, it’s going to political candidates.

Who are going to put forward the kind of policy that they’re asking for. Now, I’ve got a few other groups on the list, and you would recognize their names. I am going to mention them in a minute. Yeah, because I’m on the edge of my seat here right now. Yeah, let me just pause here, and I want to ask you, Vicky and Bruce, if you can guess. Who these top two are. I’m guessing Planned Parenthood. Okay, that’s a good guess. What would be another good guess? Unfortunately, I’m going to guess right to life. And Susan B. Anthony. Oh, Bruce. You owe your wife a dinner and a date. Oh. So the number one organization, the big powerhouse is National Right to Life that signed this letter. In fact, they drafted the letter.

And the number two organization is Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Right, so some of the other names that you would recognize on this letter would be Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition. 24 and a half million dollars. and their affiliates and states also signed it. Other groups that signed the letter, or maybe they say the same kind of thing, would be Students for Life of America, 13. 6 million. priests for life 11. 2 million Americans united for life, 3 million and even the Pro-Life Action League. So, yeah. Folks listening on the radio, you heard that right. These are powerful. Pro-choice influencers that call themselves pro-life. But in every state, they’re fighting to keep this legal ability to choose abortion legal. Now this is a huge…

splintering factor in our movement because there is a big group. I know Jason Storms from Operation Save America. Is that the right operation? Yeah. Yes, they just recently relocated to Florida. Yes, yes. And he’s been on the show several times. We’ve also had a lot of people from… Priests for Life and Florida Right to Life. So the problem is, and listeners, you need to understand that we love. These women that are in a crisis or they feel like they’re in a crisis now, God has gifted them with a blessing. And our society has made them think it’s not a blessing and that it’s not a human life. And I feel bad for that, but there is, there’s a big splinter right now. And this is part of it.

Bruce, I know you were like flabbergasted when John said that. I was. And I didn’t want to even say that because it is a, it is. Horrific. Well, looking back on when we had Linda Bell from Florida Right to Life on, and I’m looking back and I remember, because some of these groups have a, they are very pro-life, but they don’t, they take a stance. They don’t want to criminalize. The women who may choose to have an abortion. And I understand that you can’t just say, ‘Oh, abortion is illegal now and I’m going to arrest all these women because we haven’t changed that thought yet.’ But it’s just like driving drunk. Hey, you know, those people weren’t out there to kill somebody when they drove drunk, but they did it.

They made a choice. They made a decision. And so they are being held responsible. Now, I think there’s, we’d have to kind of do some. You know. Well, and keep in mind something that, as we’re talking about politicians, the thing that scares a politician the most is if you start talking about jailing women because they had an abortion. Politicians run and hide. They do. They just they run and hide. So these organizations scary to them. Yeah, these organizations, with their lobbying dollars, have got the politicians’ attention. That is the reason why I’m gathering from the direction this conversation is going, that’s the reason why we haven’t been able to make abortion a criminal offense in any of the states. Well, they speak so loudly with that money that…

The politicians listen to those arguments, and they have a financial incentive to agree with their arguments, which we haven’t even talked about yet. I think one of the things that’s really important for us to realize is that the financial supporters of National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony List and all these other organizations. Thank you. What do the rank and file people believe? Are they donating? Their hard-earned cash to these organizations so that abortion can stay legal and available. I don’t think so. I think that the average pro-lifer would be horrified. If they knew what their favorite pro-life organizations were doing. You know, they’ve not kept the faith. I think that most of the supporters of these organizations are pro-life abolitionists when you get down and have a conversation with them.

And then the leadership of the organization, they’re the pro-choice, pro-lifers. And we need to expose that. Number one, but also, like Scripture says, like the New Testament says, we need to be prepared to give an answer. We need to know what arguments they’re making. So that honest politicians who are willing to listen. We can expose them to the truth and make them make different decisions about public policy. Amen. Do I have time to talk about some of the reasons? You have a little over a minute right now. So I think we should start. We’ve got another segment coming up, but we’ve got a minute. So, if you’ve got a couple of minutes left, let’s at least outline one of the arguments that they’re making.

I mean, typically, the letters don’t make much of an argument like that letter that I quoted from earlier. It just says… Hey, we don’t support it. But they will just simply assert that women are victims. A lot of times they’ll use that buzzword, victim. But they don’t really back it up or support it. So their logic is that, hey, we don’t prosecute victims. And women who choose to abort are victims. Those are just both assertions. But then from that, they’ll conclude, hey. Women who choose to abort shouldn’t be prosecuted. And then they make this weird, wild leap to the next step. And they say, well, therefore. No law should be enacted. That might allow women to choose to abort to be prosecuted, since we don’t think they should be anyway.

Let’s just not even pass the law. So that’s kind of the way they’re thinking, if you outlined it in a logical syllogism. But we’ll attack that on the other side of the break. Okay. Yeah. All right, more Pro-Life Radio coming up and details on how you can help keep this show on the air with your donations. We really need your help, and we thank you for that. So we’ve got those details coming up and more Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday night from AM 950, FM 94. 9, The Answer, streaming on theanswerorlando. com. All right. Okay, and let me take a sip of water here before we jump back in. Okay. Sorry, when you had done the countdown, I wasn’t sure if you were looking for me to do the music.

I will do the music if you do the countdown next time. Okay, that’s cool. Okay, so you’re going to give us another example here coming back. Is that right, John? I will I’m going to run down the victimhood argument again in 15 seconds and then I want to talk about answering it. Okay, yeah, because that’s giving some people some mental handholds and ammunition they can use. Yeah, because we just had a lady that has a, you may know her, she has a site. Yeah, I’m going to reference Christine Harhoff over at Not A Victim. Yep. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay, well, let’s get ready and roll in. I’ll bring us back. Here we go in three, two, one. And we’re back on a Sunday night Pro-Life Radio.

Vicki Cherry across from me, my lovely wife. Merry Christmas. Bruce Cherry here with you. And we have our great guest, John Mishner. And John, you were talking about the reasons that we have not been able to criminalize abortion in the States. And we’re talking about… the victim mentality that’s tied to it. heavy subject. Thank you. Yeah, it’s it’s not uh I guess properly stated, it would be the claim that all women who abort, or the vast majority of them who abort, are actually victims. And that’s something that gets told to our state legislators. Often, so often that they just uncritically accept it. And we’re going to have to be prepared. To answer that narrative when we go into the halls of our capitals and ask for the criminalization. Of abortion.

So the logic is this. Number one, victims shouldn’t be prosecuted. Number two, women who choose to abort are victims. Therefore, women who choose to abort should not be prosecuted. And then they’ll go a step further and say, therefore. No law should even be enacted that would allow a woman to be prosecuted. So that’s their logic. Let’s prepare our listeners with some mental handhold to deal with this. Now. I can grant. Straight up off the top that victims should not be prosecuted. Of course we agree with that. But the remainder of the argument has just got all kinds of logical problems. Um, Point number two, that women who choose to abort are victims. This is just a straight-up category error.

Because it’s treating all women like they’re this monolithic body who do the same thing for the same reason when it comes to victimhood. It doesn’t consider individual women. So not all women who choose to abort are victims. And in fact, if you look closely at the data, I would argue that very few truly are. Now, let’s start with a definition of firms, right? A victim is someone who’s like physically or psychologically harmed. They’re under constant imminent threat of harm. That’s a true victim. An example might be a sex slave who’s controlled through physical restraint or drugs or even psychological threats. I think the classic example that everyone can relate to is a pregnant woman in China who’s literally forced by soldiers to have an abortion. Because of China’s one-child policy. Right.

These are victims. So most women who choose… are not true victims in that sense. So, for example, you guys had on your show maybe a month ago my good friend Christine from Not a Victim. Well, on her website, you can read thousands of posts from post-abortive women. So, like, one woman just says, ‘Hey, we’re not victims.’ The only victims are the women being robbed of their right to choose. Thank you. Amen. You know, the curator will come back and say, ‘Would you say that the majority of aborting women are coerced into their abortions?’ And they answer, ‘Nope. Most women who get abortions want them.’ Now, there’s another threat out there, just for another example. It says, ‘Republicans are morons.’ I’m a happy aborter. No victim here.

You know, we ask her, ‘Were you coerced into your abortion?’ She says, ‘Nope. I would do it again So these are, yeah, granted, these are anecdotal. What? There’s thousands of them. Thousands of them. Any honest review of the data would convince a normal person. That the majority of women know what they’re doing. But we don’t just have to look at anecdotal stuff. I was able to find recently a scientific… study. Um, that looked at over five thousand cases of abortion. We had 5,109 cases. Now this was published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. And in this study what they found was that only in two percent of cases—two percent— Women felt they had been pushed. to have an abortion against their wishes.

Now what does this mean to be pushed? Well, they were responding true or kind of true to the statement that someone else wanted them to have abortion. And they weren’t really confident in their decision. Now, does that sound like a victim? See, that’s not even coercion we’re talking about. We’re just talking about a light amount of social pressure. And that’s less than 2% of cases. There’s no true victimhood going on here at all. So what that means is that pro-choice, pro-lifers are equivocating on this word victim. They’re not using it to mean someone who’s really coerced. They just need someone who’s pressured. So if we grant them that definition— and then we look at the scientific study— it’s still less than 2% of women were even pressured.

So, based on this study and based on the anecdotal evidence, their claim that these women are victims is just a huge logical and factual failure. It’s just wrong. It’s just false. You know. I want to remind everybody. That the mother calls the abortionist. The mother sets up multiple appointments. The mother’s often required to look at an ultrasound. So she can look at this little human that’s growing inside her. She’s reviewing information about the abortion procedure she’s going to get. And she signs an informed consent form. Right and if it’s surgical, if it’s later in the first trimester, second trimester, she’s going to choose to climb up on a table and position her body so that her offspring can be terminated. And then what happened? Then she’s going to pay.

The abortionist for his services. I’m sorry, but this does not look like. The choices and actions of the victim. And it’s not even one simple choice that could be easily pressured or coerced. It’s this series of choices. That are stretched out over days, over weeks. And with each choice. There’s new time, there’s new information, there’s new opportunities to realize the magnitude of what they’re doing. It. In what world are these victims? I ask you. Right? I get it. I get it. Okay, so let’s answer. Go ahead. Thank you. We’ve answered the victimhood part, but let’s answer this part. About prosecution. Hmm. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s just grant that 90% of women who choose to abort have been pressured or maybe even they’re truly victims, right?

Let’s just imagine a world where that’s true, even though it’s not. Even in that case. Their argument that we shouldn’t have a law to prosecute and not prosecute. It just doesn’t logically follow. Just because some women are victims, it doesn’t mean we should grant positive legal protection to every woman who wants to abort for whatever reason. Like that’s the current legal reality in every state. So for those women who are not victims, wouldn’t it be appropriate to have a law? That would allow them to be prosecuted for killing innocent humans? And our legal system actually assumes that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Hmm-mm. So we don’t really have anything to fear because we don’t prosecute true victims. Does that make sense? It does make sense.

As I was going to say, we’ve had women on this show that before they came to know God’s love and grace, admitted that they were using abortion as birth control. That they write multiple abortions and those women are definitely not victims. Yeah, you know, if justice is going to be served. Our laws have to agree with… God’s natural and revealed law. That it’s wrong to kill innocent humans. Mm-hmm. And don’t forget the U. S. Constitution actually requires… that the laws of our states provide equal protection to every innocent human. So every law we have on the books that allows abortion is in violation of the Constitution, which is just a legal argument, but more importantly… It violates God’s law. And we ought to be really concerned about that.

So I think the path to abolishing abortion… is pretty straightforward if you look at it. With a broad, simple view. All we have to do is take away these legal protections, make it criminal, and enforce the law. This is not rocket science. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s like if you don’t want people to speed. You pass the law, put up the sign, and pull people over who speed. The rest of the people observe that they know what the law is. They see other people get prosecuted if you will for speeding, and then they behave themselves. So it’s not hard. The hardest part is going to be working around or through or over these powerful pro-choice, pro-life influencers.

I know we recently had a guy on that he said, if it was the law that abortion was illegal and you would be prosecuted, him and his girlfriend at the time would have never done it. They would have found another way. Right, right, right. Let me give you a scenario. Let me tell you a story and see what you think about it. Let’s imagine. A teenage girl. It doesn’t matter how old she is. She could be in poverty. She could be 15. She could be 19. She could be a co-ed on a soccer scholarship. Let’s just imagine a teenage girl. In the future. Who realizes that she’s missed her period. So a pregnancy test confirms her suspicion. And this makes sense to her. Because she’s had sex recently with her boyfriend, like within the last month.

Now, she desperately does not want to be pregnant. So she’s going to ask her phone. ‘Hey, how can I get rid of my pregnancy?’ And within a few seconds, she’s going to get an AI summary right there at the top of her phone screen, and she’s going to read this. Certain pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures can be used to terminate a pregnancy. But this practice, referred to as abortion, is not legal in the U. S. State laws make it a criminal offense. For anyone to solicit or perform an abortion. With charges for performing an abortion ranging from negligent homicide or manslaughter to first-degree murder. That’s what the teenager reads. So. She’s heard rumors, right? That there’s people who can quietly help solve her problems. The question is…

Will she follow up on that? Because going to jail, even for a couple of years, for negligent homicide is a huge… Wrist. Thank you. So what do you think? We’re imagining this world in which… abortion is now criminal. And somebody who wants to get one looks into it and within seconds they read what the law says. Do you think this person is going to get an abortion or not? I don’t think so. I mean, based on what we know of human nature, I think the chances are very slim. I think the chances are those who do at least know what they’re doing. Yeah. Yeah. I think the chances are reduced greatly, but I think there’s still going to be people out there.

Just like there are people that know it’s illegal to speed, there’s people out there that know it’s illegal to traffic and drugs, but they still do it. And but we need to think, like John said earlier, what does God’s word say it’s a human? Mm-hmm. Is it okay to destroy a human? Is it okay to tear a limb from a limb in its mother’s room where it should be the most protected place? Is it okay? And we all know, no, it’s not. There’s still people out there that, first off, they don’t share our faith. They don’t believe in God. And so, therefore, that’s not a moral compass. That’s not a moral point for them to stay away from it. That’s why this show exists. We’re trying to change hearts, change minds, and share truth.

And we’re up against another break. We’ll be right back with one more segment with John Mishner, a pro-life abolitionist, and we will be right back on AM 950, FM 94. 9, The Answer. Okay, this is the third. We just finished the third segment. One segment coming up, right, Dave? Yep, this will be our fourth and final. That’s it. Fourth one coming up. Oh, wow. Time flies. Yeah, see, I keep track of it over here. So John, you better get out what you need here. Yeah. Well, I actually have enough material here, probably, for another half hour, but, you know, we’ll shrink it. Yeah, there you go. Give me a second. Okay. Think about what I want to fit in and what I’m going to scratch. And John, what is your website? Because I don’t have it here. unitedforlife . us united for life F-O-R life. Type it in and see if it comes up. Because if it doesn’t, we don’t want to say it. Okay, let me do that. I have been on sabbatical. The site could have crashed.

Oh, come on.

United for Life at U. S. And… I can’t get to it here. It says the site’s not secure, and I’m on the station’s Wi-Fi here, so that might be because of their firewall. Let me see if I can get to it through my phone. Is it saying it for Fortinet in particular? Because that’s usually it can be very twitchy about websites. Yeah, I’m saying it’s not secure, so it might be fortunate. Yeah. Yeah. Hang on. Let me try on my hotspot here, John. Thank you for watching! Turn on the hotspot.

Bear with me. Come on. It comes up on my phone. It does? Yeah. It’s on? Okay. It’s the book. United for Life is training fellow believers. Yep. Yeah, our company’s website can be website filters can be very aggressive. So, if they haven’t seen it before, like there’s been plenty of times we’ll get the new client and I’ll have to then yell at them to, ‘Hey guys, these guys want to give us money.’ Can we go buy their website, please? Of course. Um,

all right. It is, but you’ve got it up over there because it’s not— it’s not letting me into it even in my Yeah, it came up on my phone. Okay. All right. Okay, so United for Life . us. Okay. All right. Okay, are we ready? John, are you ready? I don’t feel ready, but… What the heck, let’s do it. If you want to look around a little more, go ahead. We’re at… We’re fine on time for us, but we’re at… I’m not. I have to go work with another student here. In about a half an hour, so we better go. Okay. See you, man. Okay. All right. I’m going to ship my water. I’m good to go. And Vicki, you’re bringing us back. All right.

So, John, what are we asking you here? Where are we going with this? Uh, let’s see. Let’s address this other argument at least briefly. And what is the argument that is convincing officials to keep aborting? That one? Is that the one you’re talking about? Well, we talked about the argument from victimhood. Thank you. I want to address the second argument from ignorance. Okay. And actually, it’s going to dovetail into the… We’re going to jump off from where you left off. Talking about these people not having a moral compass, okay, that’ll allow the segue. Okay. All right, then. Vicky, you bring us back, and I’ll jump in. The moral compass. Okay. We are ready to go in three. Two. One. And welcome back to Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday evening.

I’m Vicky Cherry. Across from me is my handsome husband, Bruce. And online with us, we have John Michener. Before Bruce gets back into questioning John, I did have a little thing I wanted to add, though. I want our listeners to know we are not mad at, we don’t hate. These women that are having abortions, but we need to stop abortion. That’s where we’re at. We want everybody to live. And, yeah, I’m glad you said that, Vicky, because I don’t want it to come off as that we’re angry and we want to jail people or anything like that. We’re looking at any possible way we can to end this senseless slaughter of the unborn in our land. And one other quick thing.

You know, I just read something the other day that somebody had said and I totally agree with this: abortion in our land is the blight on our land, it is, and we have to get rid of abortion. I said that I know, but it’s God, it’s God’s law, like John said. All right. We won’t be blessed again until we do good. Right. OK, so speaking of God, we’re talking about, you know, the moral compass and people who don’t have a moral compass. It doesn’t matter what laws we put in place. Place they’re still going to be, it’s going to be about them, it’s going to be about convenience, it’s going to be about I don’t want this baby, or it’s not the right time for me to have a baby, that sort of thing.

If they don’t have a moral compass, people have a moral compass, say okay, well, God says that I got this baby, so here we go. So John, you know, I guess that’s another side of the argument. Yeah, it can be. Let’s talk about that. I want to address the moral compass question, but let me back up a couple of minutes first and come at it sideways. Right before the break, I shared sort of a thought experiment with you where we were imagining. A future where abortion was criminal. And everybody knows it very quickly. They can see it right there. On their phone, right. When you criminalize abortion, it has a ripple effect. Throughout the culture, it’s going to affect the decision making that people put into place every day.

Right because now people are going to be really concerned about not creating accidentally an unwanted human. So they’re going to choose more carefully, for example, when and how they’re going to have sex. Because you put this law in place. But like you said, Bruce, there’s always going to be some, like, this teenage girl, who are going to make a bad choice. And then they might wrestle a little bit with the decision. Whether or not to break the law. And so… we’re now thinking about: How many? How many teens or how many young women and men in that situation are going to choose to break the law? Would it be just to prosecute them if they break the law? Is it just to enact such a law in the first place?

Well, I know how I would answer those questions. But something very strange happened to me the other day. It was earlier this summer. I received an article from a pro-life apologist whom I follow. And she answered all of these questions in a really shocking way and actually tried to make a positive case in favor of keeping abortion. Illegal. So I’m not going to name the person or the article. I don’t need to draw attention to that right now. But I want to outline her argument. And in fact, I don’t even think I will quote from the article. I’ll just sort of summarize it by point. Her point is that women who choose to abort are ignorant. She thinks they’re naive or that they’ve maybe been deceived.

And they don’t understand that a human is living inside them. So. If a woman is ignorant, then she doesn’t have a guilty mind. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, so we can’t prosecute her. And in that case, then no law should be enacted that would even allow us to prosecute these women. So it’s kind of like the victimhood argument. But we’re not claiming that they’re victims. We’re just claiming that, for whatever reason, they don’t understand that there’s an innocent human involved that’s being killed. Now, this is where I want to work my way back to the moral compass point. There’s all kinds of problems with this argument. First of all, it’s assuming, it just assumes or asserts that there’s this massive ignorance among women who choose to abort.

And then secondly, it dismisses this moral intuition. And another thing it does is I think it misunderstands human nature. And I hope I have enough time to address that. All three of those points. But I want to address this idea that women are ignorant, first of all. Now, obviously, we can grant that some number of women… are ignorant. But I think it’s a huge mistake that they all are, or that even a large… majority. Agree. You know, ignorance is just a lack of knowledge. You know, if somebody says, ‘Hey, I didn’t know that. I had no idea.’ That’s what we’re talking about. But I believe. The humans are really intelligent. They’re capable of finding answers. They’re capable of understanding arguments. I mean, especially in this information age that we’re living in.

Right. Mm-hmm. So if someone is going to be truly ignorant about pregnancy, how is that going to happen? I mean, they must be cut off from technology or live under a rock. Thank you. You know, or they have a mental disability. That would be my argument. But we keep hearing these pro-choice, pro-lifers, like the person who wrote this article, just assuming that, hey. They’re all ignorant. And they’re just overwhelmingly listening to school counselors and abortion doctors, and they just unwittingly and unknowingly make this choice— to kill their offspring. So here’s where I think. We should jump back over to the not a victim data again. And I’ve got like five quotes in front of me. Let me just pick out two. Okay, here’s the first one. I knew it was a human growing inside me.

I didn’t wonder if it was a puppy. I knew it had feet and hands and a head and a body. I knew the abortion would essentially kill it. I just didn’t— it wouldn’t make a difference to me. I didn’t want another human. to be responsible for. I didn’t really care about the procedure. I just knew I didn’t want to birth another human. That’s one quote. Let me jump down to this last one. Listen to this one. I’m fine with calling them babies. The terminology doesn’t bother me. Either way, they can’t survive without my body, and it’s my choice whether or not they get to use my body for survival or not. I’ll kill any baby I don’t want inside of me. So. These are not statements from ignorant women.

They know that these are humans and they chose to kill them anyway. All right. Now I’m working my way back up to something you referred to earlier, Bruce, about assuming that these women are not believers and don’t have a moral compass. I want to point us back to that scientific study. That was called ‘Attitudes and Decision Making Among Women Who Have Abortions in the U. S.’ Again, that was published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, over 5,000 women. We’re studied. Okay. Um. Let me see if I can find it here. Here we go. 28% of women. Under the age of 20 years old, agreed that abortion at their stage of pregnancy was the same as killing a baby already born. I can’t remember if I cited that before or not.

Does that sound like somebody who’s ignorant? I mean, and those are the young ones. If most of them are 18 to 39 years old, I think it’s… absolutely just strains credulity. That to believe a vast majority of these adults are ignorant of basic human biology or they’re just too stupid to know what they’re doing. That’s just crazy. I think women know basic biology. And they know how to look stuff up on the Internet and make an informed decision. Um. Now. Just intuitively speaking. I think there are certain things that all human beings… Know intuitively in their heart, in their soul, in their conscience. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a believer or not, because it’s part of what it means to be a human. To be a human.

Um, there’s a philosopher named Jay Bidzewski. And he calls our moral intuition what we can’t not know. It’s an innate, God-given knowledge of right and wrong, right? It’s foundational. It’s universal. And it’s evident. In nature, we see design. We see the design of humans themselves. And you can get in touch with this. Moral conscience just through reason and experience, or by listening to your own conscience. Like, we all know that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings. And it doesn’t matter what your religion is, or whether or not you believe that the Son of God died for your sins, or any of that stuff. Human beings just know by the nature of being a human being that it’s wrong to kill other human beings. And I think that is seriously at play when it comes to abortion.

You can’t just dismiss that out of hand. And something else to take into account is that 91% of aborting women say they believe in God or a higher power. 91%. So it’s not like we’re talking about pagans or heathens or, you know, idolaters here. These are people who… Believe in God. and have a moral conscience. And they do it anyway. I mean. That’s a huge point that this data reveals. That even when we know that something is probably wrong, and we don’t have spiritual peace about it. If it’s legal and available. People will do it anyway. They’ll violate their own consciences. And that, I think, is because… civil law. speaks to people in an authoritative way that’s second only to their own conscience.

So if the law agrees with their conscience, there’s this huge barrier. to doing something that’s wrong. But if you break one of those barriers down, like civil law, They may not listen to their conscience. There’s not enough force there to restrain. The evil choice. That’s huge. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does. John, we’ve got about a minute and 30 seconds left. Oh, smokes. Yeah. I know you had three points. One was moral. Thank you. Being ignorant. Okay, okay, okay. Well, if we only have a… If we only have a minute left. Let me take us back. To the story where we started. Uh… this segment. Right. We’ve got this young teenage girl. She doesn’t want to be pregnant. And so. She looks it up on her phone.

And she reads, ‘Abortion is not legal. There could be charges of negligent homicide all the way up to first-degree murder.’ So faced with this information, would the pregnant teenager… choose to break the law. I would argue, not likely. because it’s reinforcing what her conscience and her intuition is already telling her, and it would be a huge risk. of criminal charges. So most people aren’t going to do it. And would it be just? to prosecute her if she broke the law anyway. Yes, it would. Was it just to enact the law in the first place? Absolutely. Our laws should agree with God and provide penalties for breaking these laws. And I would argue that it would be the most efficient. and most just way to abolish abortion. by passing a law.

And again, I think our biggest obstacle to abolishing abortion is going to be overcoming the influence of these pro-choice, pro-life philosophies that we’ve been talking about in this show today. And the lobbyists. Yes. Yeah. They’re one in the same. That’s their mouthpiece. So if you’d like me to come help train at your congregation, it’s unitedforlife . us. I really support the work of notavictim . org where you can read more of these statements. All right. Again, unitedforlife . us is the website. We need to put a link to the Pro-Life Radio website on there too. Pro-Life Radio. We’ll put a link on there for United for Life. John Mishner, thank you so much for joining us today. I know you are super busy. We appreciate you taking the time out. We’ve got to get you back to Florida, preferably while it’s warm here and cold there. So we’ll work on that. Thank you so much. This has been Pro-Life Radio on a Sunday night Christmas week edition. We thank you all. Merry Christmas, and may God continue to bless you all. Thank you for joining us. I’m Bruce Cherry for my lovely wife, Vicky Cherry, for Dave DeRica in the studio. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and God bless. For Life Radio on AM 950, FM 94.9.