A new Texas law has resulted in hundreds of abortion appointments being canceled and could signal a new way to combat Roe v Wade. In this episode Trent gives an overview of the law and points out what pro-lifers need to do next.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Big news coming out of the state of Texas today related to its ban on abortion. That’s what we’re going to talk about here on the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. I’m really proud to be a Texan. Nine months ago we moved from California to Texas. And while other states take pride in trying to undermine the pro-life movement or in enshrining abortion legislation further into the law, I think about the state of New York that codified Roe vs Wade into its state laws so that abortion would still be legal even if Roe were overturned. Or California, whose attorney general, that’s gone on now to work in the Biden administration, sought to force pro life pregnancy centers to advertise for abortion services. And that was not struck down until it went to the Supreme Court a few years ago in a case called Nifla vs Becerra, and there four of the justices actually voted in favor of forcing pregnancy centers to advertise abortion services, which is just mind blowing to think constitutionally you can do something like that.
Trent Horn:
But there are a pro-life people, including pro-life people on the judiciary and the legislature, we’re working hard to restore the legal protection that unborn children once had. So that’s what we’re going to talk about here on today’s program. But before we do that, just a little reminder, be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com if you like these episodes, you want to support them, help them to reach more people. Definitely consider become a premium subscriber at trenthornpodcast.com. If you become a premium subscriber, you get access to my catechism study series. It’s a video study series that goes through the whole catechism. You can also upgrade that to get my entire New Testament video study series that’s available as well. So check out all that and more at trenthornpodcast.com.
Trent Horn:
All right, today, what I want to do is I’m going to read through an article published on NPR, national public radio. It just says what the Texas abortion ban does and what it means for other states. So I’ll read through a little, give you some context and then offer my thoughts about what we will need to do and really what we need to keep in mind moving forward on this. So it says “with the U S Supreme Court mum, a new law went into effect in Texas that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.” That’s well before many women even know they are pregnant. So I think the six weeks was chosen to not say they’re trying to establish personhood from conception. This has nothing to do with birth control or contraception. This is about saying once you can detect that an unborn child has a beating heart, once you can detect cardiac activity, and a child has a beating heart three weeks after conception, then you cannot abort that child.
Trent Horn:
One point to remember, and I’ll offer commentary throughout this article. When people ask you if you think it was good that that Texas banned abortion, or what do you think of the abortion ban? Always reframe the issue, reframe the issue to say I’m really glad unborn children are protected in the law from being killed. We should frame it not as banning abortion because abortion for many people is an abstract, a word that they associate with women and feminist protestors and women’s rights. Though the word abortion is still connected to an ugly thing because a lot of people don’t want to say the word. That’s why they say things, you’ll notice politicians a lot of times we’ll say reproductive justice, right to choose. But abortion is still abstract. Frame it as saying, it’s good that unborn children have received the legal protection they once had. This doesn’t cover all of them, but it covers, I would say the vast majority, if abortion facilities don’t do abortions after six weeks. The majority of abortion, especially surgical abortions, do take place after this time period.
Trent Horn:
So here’s what it says. The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion, including those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial assistance to obtain an abortion. Private citizens who bring these suits don’t need to show any connection to those they are suing. The law makes no exceptions for cases involving rape or incest. Here’s why the law is one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. This is a very interesting law. Normally when states tried to pass these laws, the federal courts strike them down because you can’t pass a law protecting the unborn saying that the public authorities will intervene and it’s a crime to aboard unborn children. Instead, Texas has moved it to the realm of civil law where the people enforcing the law are not like police or judges per se, but it’s private citizens who are suing to prevent abortion providers and others from ending lives of these unborn children.
Trent Horn:
And from the way it’s described, it seems to be that the law is crafted in a way, I guess they’re not saying it outright in the article, but it seems it’s crafted so that you cannot sue the woman who is obtaining an abortion. So instead you would sue the abortion provider or maybe some other intermediary that might be paying for the abortion, for example. All right so what does the Texas law prohibit? It bans abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detectable. Notice it doesn’t even say fetal cardiac activity, because obviously a woman has cardiac activity, as soon as an unborn child’s heartbeat can be detected. That’s around six weeks, which is before a lot of people know that they’re pregnant. Other states have tried to do this, but those laws have been challenged by abortion rights groups and blocked by federal courts again and again.
Trent Horn:
How is this law different from other state efforts? Groups who oppose abortion rights have pushed for this Texas law, hoping that it will be harder for federal courts to knock it down. Instead of requiring public officials to enforce the law, this law allows individuals to bring civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone else found to aid or abet illegal abortions. So this law empowers individuals to enforce an abortion ban, how would that work in practice? I’ve never heard of this strategy being deployed before, when it comes to challenging abortion facilities or protecting the unborn. I’ve looked at laws obviously to try to ban abortion. Other laws have tried to enact restrictions, health restrictions, knowing that abortion facilities are usually operated in such a lazy or skeezy kind of way.
Trent Horn:
Think about Dr. Kermit Gosnell, for example, in Pennsylvania, his house of horrors there, where he performed abortions under conditions that killed women, probably even committed infanticide. All this was happening because the pro-choice governor of Pennsylvania did not want to conduct investigations into Gosnell because he’s an abortionist. I’ve seen this time and time again in different cities. Abortion providers will get away with murder, literally and figuratively, because pro-choice political figures don’t want to investigate them because they don’t want to look like they’re infringing on abortion. Now this law, however, says you can sue abortion providers. The punishment for illegally performing abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, a private citizen can sue an abortion provider who does this and they can be awarded at least $10,000.
Trent Horn:
So the question is, will these abortion facilities be willing, pay out $10,000 for every abortion that they perform? And if they do that, it would financially cripple them to do something like that. So it says in the article, these lawsuits are not against the women. Okay, so now it’s making it clear in the article. These lawsuits are not against the women says John Seago with Texas Right to Life. So you can’t sue the woman choosing to get an abortion. The lawsuits would be against the individuals making money off of the abortion, the abortion industry itself. So this is not spy on your neighbor and see if they’re having an abortion.
Trent Horn:
So this is ingenious. The way you can frame it as, here is a business that makes money killing people. And if the government won’t step in and do anything about that, other citizens should be able to sue this company that’s making money off of killing innocent people and be awarded money in return. Say great, anything that we can do that is legal, peaceful, nonviolent to protect the lives of unborn children, I say, go at it. So it says in a federal lawsuit challenging this, a coalition of abortion providers and reproductive rights groups said the law “places a bounty on people who provide or aid abortions inviting random strangers to sue them.” Well, if the government won’t do its job, why shouldn’t conscientious citizens stand up for the unborn and hold companies responsible that directly profit from the killing of unborn human beings.
Trent Horn:
And then the article goes on to talk about people complaining about the law. What it might say for other states. Seago says, from Texas Right to Life, it is still a bit untested. We’re still working on what these lawsuits are going to look like at the industry decides to break the law. So it is a new model that we’re testing out. I think it says here actually that the abortion facilities in Texas, I think it said that they’re planning to comply. Yeah, Dr. Bobbitt Kumar, a family medicine doctor who works for Planned Parenthood in Houston, says the law creates a lot of uncertainty for patients and providers, but Kumar insists he will comply. So, wow. That’s interesting. I thought they would just flagrantly violate the law and hope that the courts would, would save them later. So if this saves the lives of unborn children, that’s something to praise.
Trent Horn:
All right. So now what do we do though? This once again, when it comes to pro-life issues where things will change, laws are important. Law laws change. People will say don’t bother changing the law, you have to change hearts and minds. But here’s the thing. The law is also a teacher. So when laws change, it affects people. So when abortion became legal in 1973, I know a woman who obtained an abortion during that time period and she told me she thought it couldn’t be that big of a deal, it’s legal. After all it’s legal now so how could it be wrong? So the law’s a teacher. So you can pass laws while you’re still trying to change hearts and minds because the law helps in that regard. But I do agree we have to change hearts and minds. We have to have you and me. We have to have these difficult and awkward conversations with people.
Trent Horn:
That’s how the LGBT movement made leaps and bounds by people having conversations about so-called same-sex marriage around the dinner table, and people making their case. And I think for the people who defend traditional marriage, they were hobbled with arguments that aren’t great such as well, it’s tradition. It’s the way it’s always been. Yeah, that’s true. But you got to give a solid reason why marriage has always been a man and a woman. What are the natural law reasons for that? The same is true for abortion. Now you might be thinking, well I know it’s abortion. It’s a baby. You shouldn’t kill babies, that’s that. And if you feel that way and you feel compelled to speak out, that’s great. But what I’ve always tried to offer people, and I’ve been doing pro-life apologetics now for over half of my life, I’ve been doing pro-life apologetics. You want to try to do it in the most persuasive way possible.
Trent Horn:
That’s why I wrote my book Persuasive Pro-Life, so when people bring up this law and they say I can’t believe Texas would ban abortions at six weeks. You should ask the person, do you think abortion should be legal through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason? And if the person says no, ask them why do they draw the line where they do? And then get them to defend how do you know life begins at that stage or that’s when a person begins, and show the pro-life movement’s position is much more equitable and just. The position being that every member of the human community, no matter how old, no matter how young, they have an equal right to life and should be equally protected under the law. Now some people might say all nine months, any reason, that’s fine. Okay. Well, why not infanticide then? Well, because it’s born. And then you should ask the question, well, why does birth matter? If I move away from my computer eight inches, I don’t stop being a person. How does a child moving eight inches through the birth canal become a person?
Trent Horn:
Birth is not a magical process. There’s a Canadian pro-lifer who did a really funny parody video of this. I met her a few years ago at a conference talking about the magical birth canal, how silly that is. Because think about this, other animals are born every day, right? Cats are born, dogs are born. But they don’t become persons through the process of birth. If that’s the case, why is it different for humans? Well, it’s not because birth is not a change of identity, it’s a change of address. It’s change of location. Now some people are going to say before you’re born, you’re totally dependent on the mother to live. It’s not a person if it can’t survive outside of the womb. And when people say that you should press them.
Trent Horn:
This actually came up on a Catholic answers live episode at the beginning of the week about pro-life issues. Someone said they said a baby can’t survive outside of the womb, how can that be a person? Now you can make comparisons, a 2-year-old in a swimming pool that can’t swim is totally dependent on whoever else is at the pool to save him. A little baby, a newborn baby left on a hospital table is totally dependent, they’ll die. Being really dependent doesn’t deprive you of your personhood. But when someone says the unborn is not a person, because they’re highly dependent, they’re not a person because they can’t survive outside of the womb ask the question why does surviving outside of the womb matter? The inability to survive, being unable to survive outside of the womb, is a synonym for being a fetus.
Trent Horn:
So the argument is circular. Point out that when someone says a fetus is not a person because it cannot survive outside of the womb, is the exact same thing as saying a fetus is not a person because it is a fetus. Can’t survive outside of the womb, fetus, same thing. Fetus is not a person because it’s a fetus. It’s a circular argument that the person is making. Of course I could go on and on. There’s a lot of other arguments that are at play here. But when you talk about the issue, when it comes up, I’ll look for resources to put underneath this video if you need a brush up on pro-life apologetics. Both free ones, other YouTube videos you can watch, and then also my course at the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics, arguing against abortion, that will teach you how to answer every major argument that comes up on this issue.
Trent Horn:
But the main thing you want to do when you hear people talking about this law, saying things such as I can’t believe what this is going to do to women. And people are ratting out their neighbors always. Always, always go back to the main issue and ask them what are the unborn? Ask them do you think that, let’s say it was legal to rape a woman and the state did nothing about it. Should I at least be able to sue a rapist and force him to pay that woman? Should she be allowed to sue him for the harm that’s being done? Let’s say he killed her. Should the family be able to sue him or should anyone, should that person be punished for the act of violence committed against the innocent person?
Trent Horn:
Always make the analogy of, let’s say we have an innocent person who’s a victim of an act of violence. Shouldn’t we protect that person under the law, no matter how young that person is, no matter where they live? So remember, always when these discussions come up, be kind, be gracious, leave the door open, ask questions, and always bring it back to the one issue. What are the unborn? And get that person to defend saying I think unborn human beings should be killed because, and show that reason, it won’t justify killing a toddler, so it won’t justify killing the unborn as well. Like I said, I’ll leave a lot of links, but I’m just, I have been teaching people for a long time how to talk about this. And there’s only so much teaching that I can do. But now the opportunities organically present themselves to make your case.
Trent Horn:
It’s scary. It’s scary to have these conversations with people, with family members who might disagree with you. That’s why I’ve tried to give people a method that if you’re scared to get in this issue, just ask a question. Just ask what do you think about abortion? When do you think it should be legal? Why do you think that? And by asking questions, you can show the other person’s worldview is inconsistent. But these children are counting on you and me to use these opportunities, to make the case for life in the conversations that we have. And a lot of times that can just be hey did you hear about this in the news? What do you think about that? And then praying more. You can have the conviction to say, I guess you said this about abortion, but that doesn’t make sense to me. You said you don’t like abortion, but you think it should be a choice. Why don’t you like abortion? If it’s because it’s killing, how should killing ever be a choice?
Trent Horn:
Hey, I will pray for you. Lord help everyone listening to this to keep these divine appointments and to have these life-saving conversations and to help me do the same, when I’m out in public, when I’m on a plane, when I’m not in the mood to talk. This is our time. This is our time as pro-life advocates, as those who believe in true social justice. If you ever wondered would you have marched with Martin Luther King, Jr? Would you have worked with the abolitionists who sought to end the slave trade? If you are not involved in, at the very least talking to people about abortion is wrong. If you’re not willing to do that, you would not have stood against the time when it came to slavery and segregation. But this is our time now. And I hope you’ll take these opportunities to graciously, as Saint Paul says in Ephesians 4:15, speak the truth in love on the gospel of life itself.
Trent Horn:
So thank you guys. If you want more resources, we’ll leave a bunch of them here in the description of this video. And I hope that you have a very blessed day.
If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.