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#081 - Lois McLatchie Miller - The Unspoken Truth About Abortion

• John Gillam

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Lois McLatchie-Miller is a Senior Legal Communications Officer for the Alliance For Defending Freedom International. Lois is a writer, speaker, and thinker on issues of bioethics, faith, family and freedom.

In this conversation, Lois and I think out loud about abortion, how prevalent it is and how it became so prevalent, the methods used, changing cultural perceptions, why the emotional impacts on women are so high, how men can think about it, the political landscape surrounding abortion, how there are generational differences in attitudes towards abortion, what a post-Christian Britain means for societal views on abortion, why the Barbie film might have been more traditional in tone rather than a longing for feminist utopia that it was perceived as, Lois' changing views on the birth control pill, and much much more.

This is a difficult conversation, which contains graphic medical descriptions of the various means abortions. 

You can find Lois’s work here:

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You can watch the full show on YouTube or you can watch/listen to it on Substack

SPEAKER_00

Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class. I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Lois McClatchy Miller. Lois is a senior legal communications officer for the Alliance for Defending Freedom International, and she is also a writer, speaker, and thinker on issues of bioethics, faith, family, and freedom. In this conversation, Lois and I think out loud about abortion, how prevalent it is, and how it became so prevalent, the methods used to conduct an abortion, changing cultural perceptions about the procedure, why the emotional impact on women are so high, how men can think about it, the political landscape surrounding it, how there are generational differences and attitudes towards it, what a post-Christian Britain means for societal views on it, why the Barbie film might have been more traditional in tone rather than a longing for a feminist utopia that it was perceived as, and Lois' changing views on the birth control pill and much, much more. I made no modes about it. This is a difficult conversation which contains graphic medical descriptions of the various methods of abortion. It is not a substantive part of the episode, but it it's long enough to make you wince, I would say at the least. This is a hard conversation, but these are also the most important to have because that means they're about something important, and I think this is one that we needed to hear. Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow Thinking Class on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice, and on Substack, where paid subscribers get the opportunity to contribute questions to a special QA to my guests that only you as a paid subscriber would get access to. Let's grow Thinking Class together. Enjoy the show, classmates. Lois McClatchy Miller. Welcome to Thinking Class. Thanks so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00

So exciting. Lois, this is a conversation that a man typically can't find himself having, I would say, and probably not usually recorded, and definitely not with another man. So I thought I would get someone on who is a woman and spends a lot of time thinking about uh the reality of abortion. And uh I imagine that for some people this might include some conversations which they're not used to hearing within the culture. So I think it would be great to explore how the culture that we live in here in the West typically thinks about abortion, and then also the practical reality of what it means to have a culture which accepts abortion. So um perhaps let's begin with um with how how many abortions I suppose we see taking place. So then in the United Kingdom in 1967 was when the abortion act was passed. Uh, what scale of um abortions do we see here in the United Kingdom?

SPEAKER_02

People are often very shocked when I tell them this and um barely believe it. But uh the information that comes from and is uh accepted by abortion providers themselves is that one in three women in the UK will have an abortion in their lifetime. So one in three, if you think of all the women you know, one in three will have an abortion in their lifetime. So per year, that's 250,000 at the moment, which is such a big number that you almost can't compute it with your head. It's like a quarter million, um, just in our kind of tiny British island. Um, and about one in four pregnancies uh at the moment ends in abortion. So it's a huge, huge thing. And uh, if you think about the number of people, women, but also you know, men and others who are impacted by abortion on a daily basis, it's a wonder that we don't speak about it more often, um, given its prominence in everybody's life.

SPEAKER_00

I I ahead of this interview thought I'd look up some other stats because there were things like not knowing, for example, when the abortion act was passed and when it became decriminalized. And then it got me thinking, well, how many how how many abortions have taken place here that we we know of? And these are all government statistics. And uh I'd um I'd I'd read that on the 50-year anniversary of the abortion act, uh, 8.8 million abortions had taken place, which is which at that time was three times the size of the population of Wales. It was uh many more times than uh uh of our war dead, and I think the numbers you talk about are are mind-blowing. And when you put it down into minutes, I think some of the figures are one in every three minutes as an abortion taking place in the country, and then there's been another 1.4 million abortions since 2017. It's it's it's staggering. W what what um what is the what are the typical reasons for it? Yeah, I suppose some would say, is this being used as a a backup for uh contraception, or is it a typical uh is there a typical class of uh a woman who's going through this? Are there typical stories that you see?

SPEAKER_02

So it's it's hard to have data on the exact reasons that women have cited because it's very rare to have that collected. Um but what we do have is we um uh statistical information about where it happens around the country. And a report that just came out, I think it was two days ago, from Public Health Scotland, um, showed that it's at least uh twice as prominent in um the most deprived areas of Scotland compared to the least deprived areas of Scotland. So this is actually quite a marker of inequality. If there's a high abortion rate, typically it's going to be um women uh facing uh poorer circumstances. We also know um that one in seven women uh in the UK uh say that they uh approach an abortion facility under pressure. Um so that might be pressure from a partner, uh, pressure from family members, parents, friends who say there's no way that you could look after a child quickly, you know, have an abortion. Um we have a culture that is not particularly pro-mother. And um, a lot of women um feel these days a lot younger than they are, in the sense that uh if we look kind of 50 years ago, it was very common for women to have two to three children in their 20s, whereas now that would be quite uncommon. And so um I think we have a kind of a shock factor when a pregnancy is discovered, and an abortion can often and is often um celebrated as an easy way out. What a lot of people don't realize is that it's it's far from easy. Many women grieve abortions or traumatized by abortions and um regret them for the rest of their lives. Uh, it's not an easy procedure to have medically or physically, uh, and certainly not emotionally either. And the impact can be severe.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know whether it's almost too much too much detail to go into, but uh what are what are the typical methods of abortion?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so it depends um on the stage of your pregnancy. So at the moment in the UK, actually, within the first 10 weeks of your pregnancy, you can lawfully um call off an abortion provider, say that you're under 10 weeks and uh receive pills in the post, uh, and therefore conduct your own abortion on yourself in your bathroom. That's quite staggering. If you think about why abortion was legalized or the rhetoric under which abortion was legalized, it was so that women could have legal medical supervision and didn't have to perform it on themselves in their own bathroom. But now we have a process where it's celebrated that women perform this in themselves, which is incredibly dangerous, not least because on the phone, it's very easy for a woman to say that she's under 10 weeks. Maybe she truly believes she is and she isn't, or maybe she is quite a lot further along in her pregnancy, uh, even after the legal limit, um, and wants to obtain the abortion pills unlawfully. And we've seen um various cases of that across the UK. So um in the early stages, you can get the pills through the post. It's a uh mifepristone and musoprostal. One will effectively um suffocate the baby, cut it off from the nutrients and the oxygen uh flow that it needs in the womb. And then the next day you might take the mesoprostal, which will um evacuate the womb so the baby will come out. Uh, and that's um the typical two-step procedure. As you go further uh into pregnancy as the baby develops uh into a larger uh child, um, that method isn't going to be effective um anymore. And so uh a surgical abortion is going to be necessary later on. Um, this is quite upsetting, and I'm sorry for people who will find this upsetting, but uh essentially this involves a pair of forceps. Um the baby um has to be um brought out piece by piece and from the womb. So arms and legs are are taken um via the forceps out of the womb. And then if the baby's head is too big at the end, um, they will um insert a tool that can crush the skull uh and can uh evacuate the baby um in that way. Um in the very late stages of pregnancy, um, even that the child is going to be too big even for that method. And so uh what is needed is a fetuside, which is when um a poison is injected uh through the mum's tummy uh into the baby's heart uh to stop the baby's heart beating. Uh, and then effectively that child has to be um delivered. Um, but we know that obviously it will be delivered as a uh a dead child rather than a living one. Um so I'm sorry that that was quite brutal, but it abortion is brutal, and we need to be able to tell the truth about it.

SPEAKER_00

And that's why I asked the question primarily because it is spoken about in very abstract terms, and I know it is very it's fought over fiercely in the public sphere as to whether uh they should be so readily available or not. And uh I think as ever with public conversation is a lot of the details can be distilled to the point of abstraction, and there's a practical reality to this, which you just described, and it is very upsetting to to hear. Uh, and I um I suppose the the question about grief that you with the women that you encounter who've been through it, I mean uh uh what when you're talking about trauma, is this a combination of the physical trauma from the from the procedure, however it has been conducted, and then is there an aspect of um reflecting on what might have been?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, definitely, it can be both. Um, you know, and some women um don't um have that sense of grief until years later. Some people have immediately, and some people, you know, you if you speak to um uh uh counselors who've been involved in a kind of post-abortion grief, uh, some people women come to them in their 70s and say, you know, I did this in my 20s and it's only kind of coming to hit me now what I what I did and what I'm missing now. Um, so it's it can be different for everybody involved. Um, but we know um from studies that abortion can have um quite a severe mental health impact just from the kind of um uh physical act that happens to somebody. Um so um abortion can there's a scholar uh from Shillag who's passed away now, but he was a pro-choice scholar, David Ferguson, who did uh important research on this and found uh that it can increase depression, anxiety, um, suicidal thoughts, um, alcohol use and drug abuse by you know um hundreds of times uh the likelihood after having an abortion. It can have a really strong mental health impact, but again, often not dealt with, often not recognized, because um there's a public narrative really that abortion is a public good, it's a good thing for women. And um that uh that is kind of viewed as such a negative to even question this, that it's hard to get the help to women uh who need it because people are so scared to seem that they doubt that this was a good thing.

SPEAKER_00

David Ferguson, you mentioned he was pro-choice, so he actually was for abortion being readily available, uh, but he engaged in the in the in the drawbacks of of that being the case. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02

That's right, yeah. And you know, he was a um a true academic and that he just wanted to find the truth the the right answers. And he was angered that um his um study, I think I can't remember the details of the story, but I think somebody tried to censor his study or pull out his study or stop at being circulated in the in um the kind of top academic circles. And he found that that's very frustrating. So he's like, I well, I'm you know, I'm pro-choice ideologically, but we need to be looking at the reality of what happens, and we can't just assume that because we like something that it is therefore um flawless. Um I think that you know we can give credit where credit is due to these academics who um just want to find the truth, and we should take that and and and work in it, whatever our ideological leanings are, we should be looking to see what's best uh for a woman uh in this circumstance.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you're clearly pro-life. Uh what what um what what does a what does the world look like to you that engages in the arguments that you make? So I suppose if David Ferguson's a pro-choice man who's or or or now passed away, who who engaged with all of the data, as it were, to try and come up with a uh some kind of pragmatic uh way forward. What would what would yours look like as a as a pro-life campaigner? Sorry.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I guess I'm not a scholar, so I'm not conducting research uh in the same way. Uh but I do like to read research and and to share that information. Um and yeah, I I I've been very um grateful for the platforms that I've had in recent years, being able to debate these things on BBC, GB News, Hoc2B, that kind of thing. And I think it is becoming more of a public interest point as politicians um at the moment, as a live issue, seek to uh expand our abortion limit all the way or to leak it, to decriminalize us all the way up to birth, uh, which would be one of the most extreme countries uh in the world when it comes to abortion policy. We already are, by the way, the most extreme in Europe. Most countries allow it for every or most reasons up to 12 or 15 weeks. We allow for almost any reason uh up to 24 weeks, which is about six months. So if you think of a six-month baby mom, there's quite a significant child in there, lawful in the UK for almost any reason, up to 24 weeks, and then in some circumstances up to birth. So we already have a very liberal regime, and politicians want to take it and decriminalize it all the way up to birth. So I think there is um increased interest in um the debate from a media point of view. But I know that um from clients that have worked with that ADF International and uh others who are in the pro-life movement on a more grassroots basis, uh that there's still a great deal of censorship uh when it comes to speaking out about um the reality of life in the womb, the reality of abortion on a woman's uh health, and even you know, censorship for people holding these views in their own heads uh or praying about it in their own minds uh in certain places in England. So very concerning as we see that trend to stamp out any form of conversation and public interest in this matter.

SPEAKER_00

Well, let's definitely get back to that censorship uh uh angle in a moment. Um, but the political uh conversation which you referenced there, how there are calls to extend abortion to up to term, I I found it quite interesting that in um as at time of recording a couple of days ago, Nigel Farage delivered a speech at the at a reform uh conference saying uh that the 24-week limit is just way too high and that reform will look to bring it down. And that that was an interesting uh an interesting turn of events because at no point when people think of this insurgent uh party, uh when they think about all the things that they stand for, it'll be lowering immigration, scrapping net zero, all of these headline policy items, and yet he devoted uh some time to say that the our approach to abortion as a country is is far too liberal. Um, why why is it that you think the conversation is starting to turn?

SPEAKER_02

Well, Nigel Farage is actually in line with 70% of women in the UK, if you can believe it. Um, a 2017 poll showed that 70% of women would like to see um the abortion limit lowered from 24 weeks to something earlier, uh, which makes sense, right? Because as we said already, it's much more extreme than the rest of Europe. What we know about life in the world now is significantly more developed than we did in the 60s. Uh, we now have incredible 3D ultrasounds which show us the detail uh of a child, and we now have research that shows that they might feel pain for some people, some scholars say 15 weeks, some say 12 weeks, some say it could be even earlier. And so the medical information that the the obvious truth that we can see with our alliance now questions 24 weeks um by its just reality by its existence. So Nigel Fresh is in line with most of the population, that he's obviously not in line with much of the political class, uh, he'll be much more um uh aggressively progressive on this issue. But I think that he can see, or my interpretation is that he might be able to see that you know immigration is obviously a focus for reform. But even if, um, and I don't have particularly strong stance either way on immigration, even if um the immigration crisis was entirely solved, and if you know, if from a reform perspective, if deportations were to happen, etc., and like things were every reform policy on immigration was to come true tomorrow, British society in itself would still be broken. British society um is crippled by loneliness, divorce, broken families, um fatherlessness, um exceedingly high abortion rate, exceedingly low marriage rate. Um, these things matter because children growing up in broken homes and broken societies typically do far worse in terms of criminality, um, school education, um, having dreams for the future. Um, this really impacts the next generation. And so healthy families um are critical. And I think um, from what I understand, from what Nigel Farage has been saying recently, I think he can understand uh there's a there's a family crisis in the UK that has to be solved.

SPEAKER_00

You talked about uh uh the state of family society, and I suppose rewinding back to 1967 when the abortion act was passed, this was, and I'm probably making a few assumptions here, but they're probably relatively well-educated guesses. You know, that's the time of the sexual revolution. We've got a total change in how we're starting to see the world, much more focus on autonomy, which led on to a bit of hedonism, and a bit of a you do you culture, which we're seeing today. And at that time, I think if you were to look back at both marriage rates and the stability of society, crimes committed, all those things you talk about, fatherlessness, is they would have been and indeed were much lower. And um, I suppose as someone who was born uh in the 80s, late 80s, uh, I was I was born to a mum who was in her um mid-20s at the time, and you mentioned hopes and dreams of people, and I the thing that gets me on this topic is that all of these children uh that aren't to be, and I could have been one of those kids had that um had that popular popularized message gotten through to my mum uh as she sought her own autonomy that I never got to experience the life that I got to live. And I think about, you know, and I know maybe at the beginning of the conversation where I was saying this is many more times than our war dead, and people might go, well, that's a bit hot button. But we venerate the war dead, we see them as heroes, they had a chance to do something, even if even if we can disagree with the politics behind it and all of those things, but there was a there was a life lived there, and we recognized them for it. They had a chance to throw themselves at things in life or or did something beyond themselves. And uh, I suppose with all of these children that are unborn, these are stories never told. And that that to me, that's that's what really gets me besides all of what you described with the the physical pain and the grief of the people involved. But it's that that these are stories never told, and indeed stories we can never interact with, as those of us who are here.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, um, there's a lot of really interesting research done right now on the demographic crisis or the fertility crisis, um, and that we are we just don't have enough people. So there's there's two ways of looking at it. There's like the economic reality, right? And we look at Japan, who are basically have committed demographic suicide, like Japan basically can't come back. They're facing a financial crisis because there just simply are not enough young people in their country to support the elderly generation. And as the LG generation dies out, there will be not enough people uh to sustain their society. Um so they can. Of our where the rest of the world is heading, if we're honest, because the birth rate has fallen to such a crippling extent that um there's many countries who just simply won't be able to recover. So there's an economic argument, but there's also a social argument in that these are people that we would have had amongst us, all these missing people surely could have been working, surely could have been helping prop up the welfare state, which needs to happen because it's kind of a Ponzi scheme, right? We need to have more people in the bottom than we do at the top to make them work. But um, there's also a loneliness pandemic. Well, a third of households in the UK are now single occupant. Um, we have a mental health crisis across the nation, and so many people are citing loneliness, especially since the pandemic, uh, as a critical issue of their lives. We're missing people, we're missing families. Um, the ideology that we're kind of um stuck with at the moment uh tells us that we don't need that. And the lack of um people that that caused makes that less likely to be able to happen as we were missing so many individuals. So um we're we are in a bad situation when it comes to um being able to kind of flourish as a society united together and helping one another to raise the next generation. Um but you know, hopefully as we look into this kind of dark situation that can spark these really important conversations and see if we can start to turn around um the way that we live and look for a more positive, uh, more pro-human flourishing way to continue our society.

SPEAKER_00

I I I want to delve a little bit into Christianity here. And um I suppose I'll begin with an article, a very lovely article that Louise Perry had written for First Things, and she you you must recognize it. And um, she she was but she began with a passage from Tom Holland's Dominion, which in which he argues that whatever it is you think of the Western world, it's absolutely been shaped by Christianity. And let me show you how, because if I compare it to ancient Greece and Rome, which lots of people like to think we're closer to than that, is actually the moral values we have are a total inversion of those things where you know the weak must just effectively suffer the strong. And uh she then goes on to show the archaeological evidence of mass pits of babies that had been aborted by by Roman women, and it wasn't until the rise of Christianity that we saw abortion become taboo and then all life start being seen as sacred. And I suppose my question, Lois, is it it there's no surprise that uh we are a de-Christianised country here in Britain, or at least we are trending in that direction? Uh, certainly the political class we have doesn't subscribe to that, and many of our policy choices, whether it's on assisted suicide, uh known as assisted dying, or on the abortion act of 1967, run counter to a tradition and a and an ethical worldview that we had for so much longer. Do you do you see the society as having the tools in which to be able to see life as sacred once more? Or do you think do you think that the the Christian question might be a stu the the the connotations with Christianity might be a turn off for people and you actually but you actually need it to be able to get round the bend again?

SPEAKER_02

I think that was definitely true for the boomer generation and Gen X, uh, and probably also millennials, we're probably too late for us as well. But um Gen Z, very interestingly, uh, you've probably seen the headlines over Easter weekend where it talked about a kind of revival of faith among Shenzi. And it's been four generations. So if you think the boomers' um rebellion was not going to church because their parents wanted them to. Um, and that kind of and that gave birth to the new atheist movement and the sexual evolution took sense and kind of trickled down into all the things that we experienced in um that rejection of Christianity and that moral framework has bled out over the next four generations. But Gen Z um didn't know the generation that ever went to church or held this moral framework. So they don't have that to rebel against. And actually, their rebellion now is looking at the state that we find ourselves in um with all this. I mean, it's boring now to say woke nonsense because it's still overused, but you know what I mean, in terms of we're now needing a Supreme Court to tell us what a woman is. Um they are looking around and um the statistics show especially men, uh, but also women uh in that generation are going back to church and are seeking that kind of transcendence and truth. And I don't think that means that everything is solved and everything's going to be great again, but I think it it does offer some hope in a very hopeless world and that um these things are being sought out, that um truth and reality are being called for, and that they are seeking something that is very different to what they have been offered. And so if they're looking at a society which is on the brink of ancient Rome, maybe they're looking back to see what came next, which was the better thing, which was Christianity.

SPEAKER_00

Well, this might be an interesting segue into how people respond to you, your message within the spheres you find yourself in. Because I know you do take yourself along to places where pro-choice activists will congregate and you will uh also then go and do um talks on mainstream media at conferences. Uh what are people's reaction to you? Do you see a difference amongst the generations of you just described it? Uh are are people receptive? Do you uh is it is it hostile? What what does it typically look like when people respond to you and what it is that you say?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I mean, most of the speaking I do is either on TV or on Twitter. So most of my feedback is from a very specific kind of uh very online um group of people. Um I would say that I can notice a big difference between boys and girls. Um, I think that men, especially young men, are really wanting to explore this message a bit more. They feel very frustrated about um being left out of the conversation for so long. They can see that there's a problem and um are much more open to exploring it. Women, young women, I mean, I'm generalizing. There's I've spoken to an incredible young woman, but um typically they would be more animous. And I think um that speaks to, I mean, if you've I'm sure you've become across Jonathan Haidt and his kind of studies and looking at the difference between boys and girls right now and Freya India, who's done a lot of work in the kind of discovering the female side of that. I mean, if you're if you're a 15-year-old right now and you're glued to TikTok, the girls are getting fed um very left-wing ideology. Um and alongside their you know, their get ready with me videos, and the algorithm will just continuously feed um a very left-wing point of view, uh very kind of liberal, individualist, um, kind of um feminist um set of thoughts. And so if you're being fed that all day and you're a teenager, that's kind of what you believe. And then but um the boys are looking more at YouTube content and Jordan Peterson especially a few years ago was kind of the big influence, and I think um they're getting fed uh more of the kind of Jimbro slash um uh alpha male type stuff, but within that there's also a subsection, which is very much looking to Christianity and looking to traditional values, and so you can really see the divergence. And when I have conversations, I do quite often notice between male and female there is a difference. And um that concerns some people because they think, well, are they just gonna continue to divide diverge and we're gonna have a completely split society? But I guess um we have to hope that they uh figure out a way to communicate and some of the best ideas will naturally rise to the top, and that um, you know, men can take kind of leadership in spreading that truth amongst that generation. It's interesting. It's been a long time um in the generation since we've had kind of a male leadership to the right. Um so see how this works out.

SPEAKER_00

Dear classmate John here. This isn't an advert, so you don't need to reach for the skip button. If you're enjoying the show, then show your support by liking, subscribing, and sharing on whichever device or platform you are watching or listening to Thinking Class on. You can find me in the show on YouTube at Thinking Class. You can also subscribe to me on Substack, searching for the at Thinking Class handle, or by entering thinkingclass.substack.com in your browser, and you can receive reflections, blog series, and recommended reading to your inbox. You can also follow me on X at Thinking Classes. Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing, thanks for showing your support. Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate. Well, it will be written, I'm I'm sure. Uh that is an interesting point that you make about men being and young men being typically interested in this conversation. I suppose if I was to put my the hat on um of those who would be the younger, more progressive women, they would say, well, they just want to control uh fertility. They it's it's about oppression. And I know you you you may not be the most neutral person to us, but there's no such thing as neutrality. But look, you are you are a woman. Uh how how do you send my judge? Uh we could send that to court if you like and just have that verified. Um I I'm not comfortable making a pronouncement until I've I've heard the Supreme Court. Uh I follow idea leader Starmer on that one. So uh what what what would you say as a woman to that? So when people suggest that men showing an interest in abortion, being concerned about it being pro and and abstract messaging that gets rid of all of the the the the quite uh gory detail that you've described. Um, do you do you think women think that? Do you think that is a men trying to muscle in on women's fertility? What what what what does it really look like from the eyes of a woman in this conversation?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, it does make me smile when I see people say, Oh, you just want to control women's bodies to me, and like do I want to just want to control women's bodies? I've also never met anyone, male or female, who wants to control women's body. It's just not something I can tell you, live exclusive from the depths of the pro-life movement. No one has ever sat around and said that. It's just not a thing. Nobody wants to control women's bodies. People do want to stop babies dying. People do want to stop women going through horrific traumatic procedures. Not the same. Um, but um, I guess like from a kind of female point of view, there's two cultural moments that brought me hope, even though I know that um women trend to the left in the younger generation. But um two big blockbuster films came out in the last few years. One was Snow White. Um, and you maybe saw headlines about Rachel Ziegler, uh, the actress played Snow White, um, who I think she was only 21 or 22, but she put out these statements about um, oh, we don't even need Prince Tormy in the woman in the movie. Um Snow White can just be a girl boss, be president, you know, who cares about finding true love? And there was actually a huge, huge backlash against that from woman. Um, more than I think Disney certainly expected or anybody else. And they said, Oh, actually, I kind of would like to find love and maybe have a family. Is that is that wrong? And we've been told it so wrong for so long that I think now, you know, especially women hitting 30s and 40s who have been bought into this lie that they don't need a family and then get to age 40, 45, and suddenly the clock is ticking, it might be too late, and they haven't had that time to invest in finding a husband and to um building uh their family and having children. A lot of them are looking back for the lies that they bought over the last two decades and being like, wow, why did I believe Hollywood when they told me that this would bring happiness? You know, I have a desk job. Sure, it's they pay me, but is this all there is to life? Um so I think there's starting to be a bit of a rejection of that um amongst especially kind of 30s, 40s. And then the other cultural moment that I thought, and I'll be quick because I know I'm rambling, but um the Barbie movie, which was very divisive amongst conservatives, uh, but I take a different perspective than Ben Shapiro. And I thought the Barbie movie was too greatly conservative, uh, because the Barbie movie showed this kind of feminist utopia where I don't know if you saw it, where Barbies had like all the kind of female power and boss energy that feminism could have ever brought them. It was like the feminist utopia. And the one that was bullied at the start was Mitch, the pregnant Barbie. She was a weirdo. Who would want to be a mother? Who'd want to be pregnant? She's married to Alan, also seen as a weirdo. Why are this family so rejected and weird in this feminist utopia? But as the movie progresses at the end, um, Margot Robbie, who's playing the lead Barbie, decides that um actually even Barbie topia in its purest form, once everybody is back together and happy again, even that is not enough to fulfill her. She's actually not satisfied with this idea of just being a girl boss, being everything being celebrated as this kind of CEO boss babe. And what she's thinking about when you see the montage is this beautiful montage of motherhood and connection and family and relationship. And she leaves Barbie Topia and goes to the real world to have those kind of human connections. So um that is my deep dive analysis of the Barbie movie. But I think what these two kind of cultural moments show is that even amongst um women who um have bought into the lie, bought into the narrative that they don't want families, that families and pregnancy are oppressive and must be aborted at all costs, there's there's starting to be a recognition of maybe there is something more to life than just becoming the president of a company or having a great job. Maybe there is something to marriage, maybe there is something to having children, and maybe we shouldn't be putting all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to what we're choosing in life.

SPEAKER_00

Uh it's it's fascinating to hear what's going on, I suppose, amongst women with regards to the search for meaning and how that overlaps with the conversation we've been having today. I was speaking to uh uh a chap called Mark Walsh, who he has a podcast called the Embodiment Podcast, he's uh he's been on trigonometry and modern wisdom, as you'd expect, with with that kind of um shtick, and he uh effectively is trying to get men to start living a life which is is more fulsome and rounded and human, because the conversation we had in modernity, if you're just all aircon unit whitewashed officers, spreadsheets and PowerPoint documents, and that's your life before you go and have a flick around on Twitter without actually getting into things like either being a gym bro or doing team sports or having these shared missions together or these things that you can see you putting your agency out there and you can see in good positive stuff coming back is for guys that means they lack a lot of meaning. But on top of that, it's if you can go out and do things and become a capable person, and then you find love too, people appreciate that you're a capable person, they're more likely to come to you, you have more meaningful relationships. And the reality is, is what you just described that that Barbie was secretly hoping for, and which is common amongst women, is kind of common amongst men, is pretty much whilst there are different games that we choose to play because of our physiology and what what's coded into us, is that ultimately we're all kind of looking for the same thing, which is connection and some kind of unit. And I uh I find it I I think this is one thing that I've been on over my arc of things I've been believed in, is that I've gone from effectively being carried along by the progressive worldview in my early 20s to then being mugged by reality as most many many small sea conservatives are, and then realizing that it just doesn't offer all of those things. And I think I think that's what I find so destructive, I suppose, about a culture that only prizes personal individual autonomy without any notion of what that means for your relationships with others and how you even think about anyone beyond yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so where do you predictions last can sometimes about as long as they take you've taken to finish the sentence, but based on some of the what you're seeing, so we're seeing some sections of society say, let's go full term on abortion? We're now seeing an Nigel Farage say, look, if we form the next government, we're we're gonna we're gonna bring that down, and that's in line, as you say, with the 70% of women. And you're saying that women in general aren't necessarily as on board with this pro-abortion culture as we think. Um where do you feasibly think the country might go to, or at least the wider culture might go to in the next 10 or 20 years? Do you see that we'll still keep on racking up those statistics of of lives never lived, or could could you feasibly see those starting to diminish and there become a taboo around abortion?

SPEAKER_02

It's so tough to predict, honestly. And like, you know, you can look at it very pessimistically or very optimistically, and either one might be right or wrong. Um I think if it will be so decriminalization up to birth is on the table now. It's proposed by Labour, it's a Labour government. There's a high chance that decrim could pass in the next year, and that would leave us in a situation where we would have a very high and very dangerous um amount of abortions considering that abortion at 35 weeks is not safe. Forget your ideology, it's just not safe. Um, and you know, there's been several cases that have um proven that. So, but could there be could there be a point where we reach rock bottom and we look at what we're doing and we start to head back the other direction? Maybe. I don't know if we've reached that yet. And of course, I would like to think we've reached that yet, given the statistics. Um, but perhaps um this debate that's upcoming opens up uh a chance to have a wake-up call. Um, most people in the UK don't actually know anything about abortion, which is fair enough, in terms of they might have had one or they might know somebody who had one, that was almost certain. But very few people know that it's all the way up to 24 weeks. When I ask um girls, you know, in their 20s and in interviews or whatever I'm doing, um, I say, Where do you think your abortion limit should be in the UK? And they said, Well, I think right now it's about right what we have in our country. And I said, Oh yeah, and what is that? And they'll say, 12 weeks. And I say, Oh, did you know it's actually double that? And it's all the way up to 24 weeks and six months. And at first they'll be shocked to say, really, up to six months. And then as it settles, they say, Well, that must be about right. Because people will kind of generally go along with what the politicians have said, go along with what the law says. The law typically sets morality in a person's mind. And if if politicians passed it, well, then that's probably right. They probably had a reason to do so. So the uh the average person isn't um in tune with the kind of the reality of the policies happening around us. But um, a debate coming up like Decrim does give the opportunity to expose the truth, to expose um the reality of what we're facing as a nation. And maybe that could be a source of hope and that we we get talking about this again and um and therefore we can put forward a more optimistic view for the future where we don't rely so heavily on abortion, we actually do support women uh in need. We do support women in crisis pregnancies to give them the health, the help and the support uh that they need to continue to go on and not just drive them to an abortion clinic and drop them off.

SPEAKER_00

The 12 weeks uh intuition that people have about that being the law, that coincides very nicely with the 12-week scan, which is when everyone breathes a sigh of relief if you've got a wanted pregnancy and goes, Oh, we're okay, baby's still alive and we're on track. Brilliant, and we can tell people. I've I've known uh women divulge that they're pregnant before the 12 weeks because they're so they're so excited, they know what's inside them and they are so hopeful about it, and that happens from very early on. And I I suppose what I find grimly fascinating is that depending on how it's framed, is that if it's a unwanted pregnancy, we suddenly boil it down to being just nothing, a couple of cells, but for those who have wanted it or feel uncomfortable, is that right there they it's back to that point I was making, it's the hopes and dreams stuff, uh, which uh makes it all um I suppose a lot more real to people when they know how they would react in certain situations. So you almost don't even need to know the full biology and all the other stuff, because there's a there's a there's a moral intuition that people get just by what's in front of them. And I and I think one thing that turned my head uh and made me start looking more deeply into abortion is there's an article a few years ago where um there was a it was at one of those culture war points in American politics, and there were people standing outside of the Capitol. Uh this is in Donald Trump's first term, and it was they were they were pro-choice protesters, and there was a woman there heavily. Pregnant, um looked like she was about to pop, and she had some graffiti that was written on her on her um abdomen, which said, not yet a person. And I didn't know lots about all of the situation at that point, but I knew in that moment when I saw it that that morally was not okay. And uh and and I think I think the vast majority of people do, hence that response about it's gotta be about 12 weeks, right?

SPEAKER_02

Because it doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And uh Lois, uh is it is it fair to say that um abortion had been for some time within the women's liberation movement the one of these totemic icons of of liberation? Uh if it is, do you think from what you've seen that that is now starting to change? It's being less put forward as totemic, um, or or or is it still being defended vociferously by by those who are standing for women's liberation?

SPEAKER_02

It's really interesting to look back in the histogram of feminism with this stuff. So like the earliest feminists in the first the kind of Susan B. Anthony um style feminists, uh, and early Betty Frieden, although I think she changed her mind later, um they had no interest in abortion. They wanted um to have flexible work, they wanted women to be able to creatively use their skills and be mothers. So that looked like being able to um have work from home policies, great maternity benefits. Um, they were women at that time were entering a workforce that was designed for men, as we know why, because it was for men. And there was things in a woman's life that it was coming up against in terms of the expectation to be in the office in the evening, etc., when they had um checker commitments at home. So it was started off as a really good, and I think we still haven't achieved that yet, um, way to find um flexibility for women to um achieve their potential in the home and in the workplace. Um, and it was later on that this um desire for um equality between men and women as distinct beings who need distinct things became a desire for equality to represent men and women being exactly the same. And so anything that a man could do, a woman could do better. And the feminism kind of twisted and morphed into being about well, a woman should be able to be a CEO too. Well, a woman should be able to sleep around too. She should be able to have her own sexual freedom because that's what men do. They don't necessarily get pregnant afterwards, neither should we. It became, you know, women should work like a man, sleep around like a man, you know, have all the kind of free gambling sexuality, the kind of um sex in the city, Carrie Bradshaw feminism. And this was seen as what was going to liberate women. But as we know, you know, from the Yale study that happened uh about a decade ago now, women's happiness declined over time rather than um progressed over time, um, in relative and absolute terms, according to men. And now we have the situation um today. But I what the funny thing is, and the Turks are going to hate me for this, even though I'm lying with them on many other things, is um this idea of woman and men being the same is very difficult to stop that from coming. Well, then when if women and men are the same in every aspect of their lives and they can behave the same and they can suppress their biology to be the same, then it's very hard to argue then, well, well, a man can't be woman or a woman can't just turn into a man. Now we have the biological technology they think or they say they do to be able to make that happen. Yeah, but that feminist um ideology of the second wave, the carry badge of feminism, opened the door to the trans movement and said that men and women can just be the same and that men should get access to all of women's rights and vice versa. So um that's kind of where we are today.

SPEAKER_00

So off piece from your question, um, which was can we the it was the it was uh it was whether abortion as a totemic uh structure within the women's liberation movement, if if that is now going to shift away or whether people will just continue to defend it uh no matter what?

SPEAKER_02

There's definitely a subsect of feminism who still see it as like they haven't they're they're on the cusp of getting complete abortion. I mean, in the UK, it looks like it might be decriminalized um in the coming years. Uh in the US, there's states where it's available all the way up to birth. So they're on the cusp of achieving this, but I think it is still such an animus thing for them because it is the ultimate suppression. If a woman can kill, like, I'm sorry to use this language, but it's the truth. If a woman can kill her child, then she can absolutely just like dominate every kind of um female uh aspect of her life. Um, she can suppress and overcome any sort of female biology that they view as negative. Of course, I don't see woman being able to get pregnant as a negative. I think that's an incredible thing that woman bot woman's bodies can do and should be celebrated. But if you have the right in law and the um affirmation of everybody's society that you can kill your child, that you can kill anything about you that is female, you can kill anything about you that is woman. And so it's kind of this ultimate act of of defiance of to say, you know what, I can even get rid of my children. That's how um, you know, that's really in a weird way, that's how male I can be. I think even get rid of my children. So I don't know, it's just it's this, it's such the ultimate expression of victory in their ideology that they have overcome every sense of biological constraint placed upon them. That I think until they achieve um, you know, the entire population affirming that this is a public good, I don't think there's a subset of feminism that I don't think will let it go ever. Um, but there is also, you know, that's the people who are ideologically strong. And then there is this great big middle mass of women who are not out there fighting uh in the trenches on either side, but are just watching the debate and listening and living their lives and seeing the reality. And I think, you know, as that debate gets more and more animals, this side who want to opt to birth any point, any reason, seem more and more unreasonable and more and more extreme. And they are, in fact. Um, and hopefully that helps expose some of the reality for the average woman who's looking at these issues, who might be more persuaded that we need a more, at least a more moderate approach, if not um, you know, looking towards a pro-life approach.

SPEAKER_00

Two very compelling arguments you made there. One about second wave feminism and the aggressive equality or the equalizing uh motive of the second wave feminists opening the door to um transgenderism seems actually quite reasonable when you put it that way. And uh I the the point you make about being defined by who it is you have labelled as your enemy, in this case within certain strands of feminism, not seeing the sexes as complementary as first wave feminists did, but actually rather in rivalry. And yet once you've chosen your rival, how you become defined by your rival, and as you talked about trying to take on the the the um what are being classified as typically uh manly characteristics, um, and that that domination is uh a very compelling argument you made there.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely not mine, definitely read it.

SPEAKER_00

Uh well, every everything every there's nothing new under the sun, everything's a remix. Uh Lois, before I let you go, there's a one question that I ask all of my guests when they come on the show, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life that you perhaps once thought was a moral absolute and uh maybe not, maybe you've never had one of those. And what was it that made you think differently?

SPEAKER_02

I have a controversial one. Um but it's an personal take, not you know affiliated with any of any other causes I work with, but I personally have changed my mind on contraception. Um yeah, so I um I didn't also grow up particularly like you know involved in a pole-life argument or any sort of political argument. I grew up in a fairly you know happy butt vanilla um existence in a family that didn't get very involved in societal debates. And um when I was um dating, I remember um my husband, my now husband and I had this conversation about contraception or like when we would have children, I was like, oh, it's fine, I'll just take the pill. No problem. I mean, I was pro-life because I thought it was and it is wrong to kill a child who existed, but I thought, well, child doesn't exist at that point, so what's the problem? Um and I, yeah, it was when my husband said to me, like, have you actually looked into or read about this pill that you speak of? I said, No. And um when I looked into it, and when I spoke to a woman my age who had been put on it from a very early stage in their teenage years, whether that was um because they it was good it's good for cleaning up acne or because the doctor assumed that they were going to be sexually active from an early age, uh, they spoke about the impact that though have taking synthetic hormones every um day, week, month um can have on your biology, the way that it changed. I mean, there's stories out there that you use about how it can change who you're attracted to. Um, it um completely um it changes your biological chemistry in reality and has made some women uh really suffer um, masking symptoms of what has been um, you know, such that you're supposed your body is letting you know about whether you have, you know, your uh periods are regular or there's different things going on in your cycle. Taking um synthetic hormones has masked that for many women until they get into their late 30s. And um, I just don't think we have this conversation enough. I certainly am not informed enough um about all this. And I just opened up this world of, oh my goodness, like we are pumping this stuff out as if it's nothing. And actually, this has a pretty um substantial impact on women's health and women's bodies, and we're just not looking into it again because it's such a taboo topic, to even seem as if you might oppose it. And so I just think there used to be so much more research done, so much more examination of the effects of these pills uh on women's health and and how it's impacting socially as well as uh physically. And um, yeah, so that's what I have changed my mind on in recent years.

SPEAKER_00

Very interesting. I I can't I can't help but sense that there is a there's definitely a live debate forming here uh and and in a changing of the tide. And I know we've already mentioned her once, but uh look Louise Perry in her book, The The Case Against the Sexual Sexual Revolution. She uh in that book said something like um, no sex for six months when you meet someone. And both she and Mary Haronson have made the point about the pill and uh how it's has all those detrimental effects, which you've just uh you've just pointed out. And that's um she went back on trigonometry, I think, and they said anything that you changed your mind about, or in fact she just brought it up and she said, at the time I put six months in the book, but now I actually just say no sex before marriage.

SPEAKER_02

Um she says engaged.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, engaged, engaged, okay.

SPEAKER_02

So I challenge her to go up to marriage, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But it but it's it's fascinating, isn't it? Because I suppose women are the ones who can set the bar when it comes to when it comes to courtly relationships, right? And I I think about this quite a lot. Is we talk about dating culture and dates and when are we official? And that was definitely not a British thing. I mean, you can find that it was courtly love pretty much all the way up until Second World War. And even people that I met who grandparents, you know, they met at dance halls and they talk about courting. Oh, he courted me.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Um, you know, there was like a real effort. It wasn't uh, you know, we're just we're just testing the market, we're trying a few people out at once, and maybe after a while I'll decide whether I want to get into this thing. And I I I wonder now this live debate coming up about how ultimately women can set the bar when you've got the Freya Indias and you and Louise Perry and all these others talking about how there are different ways in which we can relate to one another that would be way healthier and would actually weed out the people who are of ill intention and and and then cultivate the good people and cultivate good relationships. So uh maybe this is the start, this the seeds being sowed of something better.

SPEAKER_02

I hope so, yeah, definitely. I mean, there was such public outcry over the Lily Phillips videos recently, wasn't there? But like everyone was so disgusted that she had slept with a hundred men in the night or funny blue, a thousand men in the night. And I think, you know, when we see the reality of the end of this kind of sexual attitude of I can do whatever I want, my body, my choice, and we see like the kind of extreme version of that, it does make both men and women step back and be like, oh, maybe we should kind of rethink about maybe we do have boundaries and maybe we do, maybe there is um a positive outcome of of waiting rather than uh just um taking this attitude of you know, come what may.

SPEAKER_00

And one last question, Lois, before you go. You said you were from a normal background, vanilla household, didn't really engage in societal issues, you now find yourself a part of one of the biggest hot button issues that our society has ever really been through. And I can't imagine you are necessarily welcomed with open arms by a lot of the people that you can find yourself rubbing shoulders with because of how this has typically been discussed. How did you find yourself getting into this? Did you just feel compelled to do it? Was it calling, or what was it that brought you into the spotlight to take this mantle on?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, I don't have like a really kind of exciting one day everything changed answer. I um was always kind of interested um in where you know Christian social justice, if you know what I mean, like the um finding justice and society for the widow and the orphan and the poor. And so growing up, I kind of had an instinct to to think about that. And then I went through university, I actually did an internship uh with a Christian charity called Care, and um I did a little project on surrogacy, which was just emerging as an issue at this time. And as I looked at surrogacy and the human rights involved in there, you know, the sale of a child, the impact on a woman's body, I started to think if I disagree on the sale of a child, if I'm arguing that surrogacy might not be a good idea, then if it if a child can't be sold, truly it has rights beyond that. And that kind of made me think more deeply about the pro-life movement and got involved in ADF International, where I kind of expanded my my thinking on this stuff as well. And my husband along the way, who is a very um strong pro-life advocate and a medical doctor as well, has um helped me to crystallize some of my thinking. And then further down the road, Louise Perry and all um Mary Harrington and reading and just getting involved in some of the conversations that are you know live on Twitter. Anyone can just join in and read and watch, you know, these podcasts that are so readily available to us now that haven't, you know, is our generation is has so much access to information and to um expertise that I think, yeah, like I I don't have a secret sauce, I just dived in and anyone can do what I did. Um just to to to um follow an issue and and deep dive some research and and find out um yeah, what can be made better for society.

SPEAKER_00

Well, Lois, thank you for coming on here and walking us through warts and all the issue of abortion, something that you've come to know probably much more intimately than you would have liked, given the details. Uh however, it's been I actually nearly used a term which you'd use uh when you've just had a normal conversation, like it's been a pleasure, it's been a delight. Uh it's it's hard to say that, but I I've I've I've enjoyed being able to engage with you on this. And before I let you go, where can viewers, listeners find you in the dark corners of the internet? And is there anything that we can expect from you next?

SPEAKER_02

Sure, yeah, do follow along. I work um a lot on um legal matters uh surrounding these kind of bioethical issues and making sure that people can speak freely on these topics in the public square. So I work on that with a Christian group called a legal group called ADF International. So I'm on Twitter um at at Lois McClatch. Um if you Google my name, you'll be able to find me. Um ADF International is out there, adfinternational.org. So you can find uh all about the stuff that I uh work on with them as well uh there. And uh yeah, I post all my kind of media interviews online, so look it up.

SPEAKER_00

Please do. Lois, thank you very much for joining me. And here's the next conversation at some point in the future.

SPEAKER_02

Sounds good.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at ThinkingClass and follow me on X at Thinking Classes. Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters. Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond. Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you. I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.

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