Audio only:
In this episode Trent responds to Rep. James Talarico’s “pro-choice Christianity”
To support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent
[NEW] Counsel of Trent merch: https://shop.catholic.com/apologists-alley/trent-horn-resources/
Be sure to keep up with our socials!
https://www.tiktok.com/@counseloftrent
https://www.twitter.com/counseloftrent
https://www.instagram.com/counseloftrentpodcast
Trent Horn (00:00):
Texas House Representative James Talarico recently won the Democratic Senate primary and his eloquent and reserved manner have earned him a lot of praise. He’s also a seminarian in the Presbyterian Church of America, and so he gives sermons as well as speeches, like this one where he says he’ll give more sermons on how transgender men require access to abortion.
James Talarico (00:19):
Before we go further, I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care too. Defending transexans is something we have to do every day at the state capitol. And you better believe I’ll be giving sermons on that too.
Trent Horn (00:32):
So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about Talarico’s comments on the issue of abortion, especially those made on the Joe Rogan experience. And I’ll show that evil doesn’t become good just because it’s defended by a well-spoken, gentle person.
James Talarico (00:45):
I get suspicious when anybody, whether it’s a televangelist or a politician, tells me that something is central to my faith when Jesus never talks about it. To me, that should, I think, ring alarm bells.
Trent Horn (00:58):
But Talarico is inconsistent on this point because he says you can’t even call yourself a Christian if you allegedly destroy the environment with greenhouse gases, even though Jesus never said anything about protecting the environment.
James Talarico (01:10):
You can’t call yourself a Christian and destroy God’s creation with greenhouse gases.
Trent Horn (01:16):
Now Talarico might say that even if Jesus didn’t say anything about climate change, Jesus did say to love our neighbor, and we can’t love our neighbor if we destroy his environment. Let’s set aside the issue of greenhouse gases being a byproduct of ways to actually love your neighbor, like giving him shelter, climate control, and reliable access to food and medicine. Setting that aside, I’d agree that you can derive Jesus’s moral teachings about particular issues from his foundational principles. I mean, Jesus didn’t say anything about child sacrifice, which happened in the first century, but obviously Jesus’s command to love our neighbors extends to not killing them when they’re babies. And that also means we shouldn’t destroy God’s creation, to use Talarico’s words, in the womb, because that would be the ultimate unlimiting thing to do to our unborn neighbors, right?
James Talarico (02:06):
We’re looking at the last 40, 50 years, the religious right has made a concerted effort to make homosexuality and abortion the two biggest issues for Christians. And the Southern Baptist Convention was pro- choice until the late 1970s. So this idea that to be a Christian means you have to be anti-gay and anti-abortion. There really is no historical, theological, biblical basis for that opinion.
Trent Horn (02:32):
Now, I do point out in my previous episode when Protestants were pro- choice that many mainline denominations and even the Southern Baptists were pro- choice in the 1960s and ’70s to varying degrees. But the Catholic Church has always opposed abortion. According to the catechism, since the first century, the church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means is gravely contrary to the moral law.
James Talarico (03:02):
Well, there were certainly abortions in the ancient world. Well, there’s some … And again, I haven’t stated this enough to say this definitively, but there are interpretations of certain passages from the Torah where some folks will even say that there’s some subtle instructions for how to perform an abortion in the ancient world, certain things to drink, things like that.
Trent Horn (03:27):
Except the people saying this are amateurs on TikTok or Chank Uyghur who misreads Numbers chapter five.
Chank Uyghur (03:33):
May this water that brings a curse into your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries, it is clear as day. There is no question about it. If you don’t believe me, just go read the Bible. It is pro abortion.
Trent Horn (03:51):
The Bible is not pro abortion because Numbers five never even mentions pregnancy and does not give a recipe for an abortive patient. It’s talking about a woman accused of adultery who at the instruction of a priest drinks water mixed with dust from the tabernacle floor, which we know does not cause abortions. The text just says the woman will become infertile and unable to have children if she is an adulterous. Critical scholar Dan McClellan says, “The fact that the outcome, if the woman is innocent is explicitly that she will conceive suggests to me that she wasn’t already pregnant.”
James Talarico (04:25):
The point is that this idea that there is a set Christian orthodoxy on the issue of abortion is just not rooted in scripture. We can have an honest debate about it. If Prop Francis were to come back and sit at this table and tell me, “James, I’m pro- life and anti-abortion, here’s my theological argument.” I’m here to listen and respect that opinion. I have dear friends who are anti-abortion. All I’m asking is that for Christians who are pro- choice and who respect the bodily autonomy of women, that we be given the space to make our theological argument, because I think there is a lot of biblical evidence to support that opinion.
Trent Horn (05:06):
But theology isn’t something we decide through democratic debate. I’m sure even Talerico would agree that some claims are not debatable and should simply be rejected. For example, I’ve previously discussed Christians like Corey Mahler who defend the racist belief that God cannot sanctify Black people as much as white people. Would Talarico want us to just sit down and debate whether Black people are fully human or would he simply rebuke this nonsense and affirm that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God? If he do that, then shouldn’t I be free to rebuke the nonsense that unborn children do not have any human rights, and so it should be legal to kill them for almost any reason? However, I will grant Representative Talarico’s request and hear his argument, and we can see if science, philosophy, history, and theology support keeping it legal to abort unborn human beings or if it supports making it illegal to abort unborn human beings.
Joe Rogan (06:01):
What do you think is the biblical evidence to support the opinion of being pro- abortion?
James Talarico (06:06):
So one, in Genesis, God creates life by breathing life into the first human being, which we later call Adam, that life starts when you take your first breath. And that is actually the mainline position in Judaism is that that’s when life starts.
Trent Horn (06:27):
Adam was a special case in the history of the world, so we can’t apply that to other human beings who were born of living, breathing humans. Besides, if you take the arguments literally, you get outcomes Talarico would probably like to avoid. For example, some children do not breathe immediately after they are born, but that wouldn’t make infanticide permissible in those cases. And all unborn children do breathe before birth through an umbilical cord or the lining of their cells. So why can’t we say they’ve already taken their first breath? Either way, this argument doesn’t prove an unborn child can be killed simply because he or she is unwanted. Finally, Jews are divided on the question of abortion. Some are very liberal and basically support abortion until birth, but conservative and Orthodox Jews generally oppose elective abortion. Orthodox Jews only allow abortion if the woman’s life is in danger, if the fetus has a severe anomaly like Taysak’s disease, or in a few cases before the human embryo is 40 days old.
(07:25):
They do not support abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason. But Talarico then pivots to Christianity saying Jesus fully included women in his ministry, which is true, though Jesus didn’t call them to be one of his 12 disciples. He then talks about Mary and her importance to the Christian story and uses this to defend abortion.
James Talarico (07:44):
But I say all this in context of abortion because before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent, which is remarkable. I mean, go back and read this in Luke. I mean, the angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do and she says, “If it is God’s will, let it be done. Let it be. Let it happen.” So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create. Creation is one of the most sacred acts that we engage in as human beings, but that has to be done with consent. It has to be done with freedom. And to me, that is absolutely consistent with the ministry and life and death of Jesus. And so that’s how I come down on that side of the issue.
Trent Horn (08:43):
Creation requires consent, but abortion is not the decision to not create. Abortion is the decision to destroy that which is already created. To make an analogy, a pilot must consent before he decides to fly you in a private plane. He can choose to not fly you if he doesn’t want to, but once he consents to do that, he cannot revoke his consent or abort the flight by parachuting out midway through the trip, leaving the passengers to crash. Likewise, whenever a child has come into existence, he or she must be protected just as we would protect a born person who is also our neighbor made in the image and likeness of God. Finally, I would ask Representative Talarico, would it have been a sin for Mary to decide to abort Jesus after the enunciation and change her mind? If Talarico believes women have complete bodily autonomy, I think he’d be forced to say it would not have been a sin for Mary to abort our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
James Talarico (09:44):
If you believe that a fetus is a person now-
Joe Rogan (09:48):
Well, it certainly has a potential to be a person, right?
James Talarico (09:50):
Well, and a fetus is alive in terms of just biologically alive,
Joe Rogan (09:54):
But
James Talarico (09:54):
We do have literally trillions of living organisms in us right now. The question is-
Joe Rogan (09:59):
But they don’t have the potential to be a full-grown human being.
James Talarico (10:02):
Absolutely. But the question is, is a fetus or is an embryo a person with full legal rights that trump the rights of a woman?
Trent Horn (10:10):
But a human fetus isn’t just alive. He or she has human DNA, human parents, and is a member of the human species. Not every member of the human species has the exact same rights, but they should all have the most basic right to not be directly killed when they’ve done nothing wrong. And contra rogan, unborn children have the potential to be a fully grown human being, provided one doesn’t neutralize this potential by killing the child in the womb. Unborn children are not potential persons. They are persons with great potential.
James Talarico (10:44):
So in Texas, again, we’re not recognizing any of the shades of gray in this conversation. It is the most extreme ban in the country, and we’ve seen the devastating consequences of it. We saw Texas women who were forced to wait in emergency room parking lots until they went into sepsis. I mean, we’ve seen women banned from using public highways to travel out of state to get an abortion.
Trent Horn (11:10):
The County of Lubbock and Texas did not prevent women from using public roads. It proposed a bill that would allow private citizens to sue someone who transports a woman through the county to obtain an abortion, usually in neighboring New Mexico. The bill specifically exempted the pregnant woman from being sued and did not involve things like police arbitrarily arresting pregnant women at airports. However, if we would limit people who drive children to be abused across state lines, why wouldn’t we limit people who drive women with a child, born or unborn, to be killed across state lines? As for women’s health, Texas law already allows doctors to use reasonable medical judgment to provide abortions of a pregnancy quote, places a woman at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function, even if it is “not necessarily one actively injuring the patient.” And while there are cases where patients were unjustly denied legal care, maternal mortality has not dramatically increased in Texas after abortion was banned.
(12:13):
This article even has the headline, A Dramatic Rise in Pregnant Women Dying in Texas After Abortion Ban. But when you scroll down, the article’s chart summary of the data shows maternal mortality increased from 2019 until 2021 before the abortion ban went into effect. And the next year, 2022, maternal mortality decreased after abortion was banned.
James Talarico (12:37):
If I’m, again, trying to take people at their word, trying to assume the best intentions and hear a good faith argument on the other side of this, if my concern is with the life of an embryo or the life of a fetus, the greatest threat to that life is a miscarriage. I mean, if your concern is how many embryos or fetuses we’re losing, the number that we lose to miscarriage versus the number we lose to abortion, I mean, it’s dwarfed. And so I’m always interested why the pro- life movement is not more interested in figuring out how we prevent more miscarriages.
Trent Horn (13:14):
Here’s an analogy so Representative Talarico can see where we pro- lifers are coming from. Imagine if ancient Rome allowed citizens to pass a law to prevent killing infants by exposing them to the elements. Some in Rome would say it’s a father’s right to choose if his son or daughter lives. And look, why can’t we just get together and find a way to keep children from dying naturally since many more children die from natural causes in ancient Rome than from being left to die in the wilderness. A pro- lifer in ancient Rome might say, “Well, it might be a long time before we discover how to consistently save children from natural death, but in the meantime, it would be really easy to save children from exposure by simply making it illegal to do that. ” And the same is true of abortion. In fact, studies have shown that nearly 10,000 more children were born than usual in Texas in 2021 due to the passing of the state’s abortion ban.
(14:09):
That means nearly 10,000 children’s lives were saved by making abortion illegal. Also, it’s disingenuous for Tala Rico to say there is room in the Democratic Party for pro- lifers, as he does in this older clip where he references Prop Francis’ pro- life ethic.
James Talarico (14:26):
If someone like Pope Francis, who may be anti-abortion, but is also anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-climate change, if someone like that can’t find room in our coalition, then we have a huge problem. And I think it’s been shown that usually a lot of the positions and policies that are supported by Democrats, scientifically valid sex education, readily accessible forms of family planning and contraception, that those things all reduce the number of abortions.
Trent Horn (14:55):
First, good luck getting the Pope to be on board with your plan to combat abortion through the evil of contraception. And second, notice what’s going on here. This is not an invitation for pro- lifers to become Democrats. It’s an invitation for pro- life Democrats to become pro- choice. It doesn’t ask pro- choicers to change anything they’re doing, but it does ask pro- lifers to give up providing legal protection for unborn children or even give up simple legislative goals like informed consent laws that would tell a woman, “Hey, here’s what abortion actually does.” I also need to point out a double standard when it comes to religious politicians. When a conservative politician justifies his votes from his theology, he’s accused of fascism or misrepresenting his own Christian theology, as was done to J.D. Vance when he discussed the idea of Ordo Amoris and immigration, which I covered in a previous episode.
(15:50):
But when a liberal politician justifies his votes from theology, well, he’s just spreading the love of Christ and his theology isn’t subject to an inquisition, as we saw with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi’s quote unquote Catholicism. Far from being a fascist, he is the protector of democracy from Christian nationalism as seen in this clip of Talarico on the late
James Talarico (16:12):
Show. There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the worship. It is the worship of power in the name of Christ, and it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.
Trent Horn (16:31):
Representative Talarico does want to use the power of government to enforce his view of what it means to love your neighbor. The Atlantic recently published an essay called Americans Should Stop Using the Term Christian Nationalism. With the subtitle, Religious Beliefs Have Driven Political Change for Centuries. The question today is which Christian values will prevail. Even they admit that liberals don’t mind when Christians promote their faith through politics, as long as it aligns with their liberal values. So each side should just admit they’re trying to do the same thing. Carter writes about Talerico’s appearance on the late show saying this. Talarico’s critique verges on irony. Given his own campaign for Senate, one presumes he is not opposed to the pursuit of power by avowed Christians. In one 2023 sermon, Talarico suggested that if the United States were actually a Christian nation, then it would embrace all of the policies for which he is fighting, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, gay rights, and basic support for the poor.
(17:33):
Talerico would fit snugly into the tradition, Trace and Sutton’s book of progressive Christians who have sought across generations to enshrine their religious convictions in the law. What’s funny is that while the left-leaning Atlantic magazine can see this, self-described conservatives like David French can’t. In the New York Times, French said of Talarico that quote, “When he’s arguing with the religious right about say Christian nationalism, he makes a specifically Christian argument to counter a poisonous Christian movement. Jesus liberates,” Talarico said in a sermon in 2023, Christian nationalism controls. Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement based on mutual love. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate. I have no idea what David French is even talking about here. His image of Christian nationalists is as fictional and over the top as the villains from Captain Planet who pollute the environment just because they love pollution.
Captain Polution (18:35):
I am captain polution! (Go polution!)
Trent Horn (18:41):
Sure. There are probably some wackos who call themselves Christian nationalists who genuinely hate people, but you can bet that if you think that marriage should retain its perennial natural definition and you think unborn children should be protected under the law, then to most liberals, you are a hateful, controlling and maybe murderous Christian nationalist. So don’t be fooled into thinking conservative Christians just want to control people by enshrining religious dogma into civil law, whereas liberal Christians simply want to feed the poor and not impose their doctrines on others. Every conservative Christian I know wants to help the poor and often go into poor communities to do that themselves. They just disagree with liberals about which policies best help the poor and don’t have unintended consequences that hurt the poor. And that’s something we can reasonably disagree about. But what we can’t reasonably disagree about would be reducing poverty by killing poor people, either before or after they’re born.
(19:40):
And liberal Christians like Tala Rico don’t want to just legislate a vague, love your neighbor, help the poor mentality and leave everybody else alone. Talarico certainly wants to paint the other side as totalitarians who do this, as he did in this part of his Joe Rogan interview.
James Talarico (19:55):
And I think that’s what we see across this Christian nationalist movement is controlling what you do with your own body, controlling what you read, controlling what you learn, controlling where you travel. I mean, this is religion at its worst, is trying to control people and what they do.
Trent Horn (20:11):
But liberals absolutely want to control people through the law and often do so in the name of religion. They want to control what car you can drive or whether you have a gas stove in your home in the name of climate change. They want to control if you can own a firearm or use your tax dollars on your own child’s education through vouchers. In August 2025, Talerico voted against ivermectin being made available over the counter while voting to make it easier to get abortion pills, even though abortion pills are much more likely to cause serious side effects. This shows Talarico is not pro- choice or he simply believes in bodily autonomy. The widespread liberal belief in masking two-year-olds during the COVID pandemic shows they’re not pro- choice or pro- bodily autonomy. They’re pro- abortion. They just mask that position with euphemisms like the right to choose as expertly parodied here in this Lutheran satire video.
Captain Polution (21:06):
God would never want anyone violating a woman’s bodily autonomy. God would never ask a woman to sacrifice her reproductive rights. God would never take away a woman’s right to choose to kill the child growing in her womb. Wait, you think abortion’s murder? No, no. I don’t know why I said that. What I meant to say is that a woman should be free to control her own body. By killing the child growing inside her body. What the heck? Why am I saying this? Oh dude, you know what’s probably happening? I bet you just broke your euphemism filter. My what now? Your euphemism filter. It’s that part of your brain that uses pleasant or righteous sounding terms to describe something unpleasant or sinful so you don’t have to deal with the unpleasantness or sinfulness of the thing.
Trent Horn (21:45):
Talarico also voted against a bill that would prevent men from having access to women’s changing rooms, which means he thinks love your neighbor means preventing women in public spaces from having the freedom to not have to see male genitalia in a locker room. This sounds like the real controlling nationalism Jesus would want to save us from.
James Talarico (22:05):
Again, I’m very open for my fellow Christians to disagree with that and they may have scriptural passages they point to to be anti-abortion. And I think that’s a debate that we should feel comfortable having.
Trent Horn (22:18):
Let’s do it. I will say though, it is interesting that when people make caricatures of pro- lifers, it’s usually of religious fundamentalists trying to impose their theology on other people. But in reality, when a Christian politician cites the Bible related to abortion, it’s usually a pro- choice politician making arguments like Talarico makes. Pro-life Christian politicians usually make a very modest, very sound argument. God forbids the killing of human beings as seen in Exodus 2013 and Proverbs 6:16- 17, because human beings are made in God’s image and likeness. And since we know from science and philosophy that the unborn are human beings who do not differ from born humans in a morally relevant way, it follows that directly killing them through abortion is wrong. No special argument or special appeal is needed to show that abortion is wrong, just as no special argument from scripture is needed to show that infanticide or lynching is wrong.
(23:17):
Pope St. John Paul II put it well. “The texts of sacred scripture never addressed the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it, but they show such great respect for the human being and the mother’s womb that they require as a logical consequence that God’s commandment you shall not kill be extended to the unborn child as well. So I’d be happy to sit down with Representative Talarico and discuss all of these issues with him. I even reached out to his campaign to set that up and they said they were too busy before the primary. Well, now that the primary is over, if he’d like to stop by the studio, he’s more than welcome to do that. And if you want to help us produce episodes like this and host dialogues like the one I’d like to have with Representative Talarico, then please support us at trenthornpodcast.com.
(24:01):
Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.