In this episode Trent responds to Rep. James Talarico’s “pro-choice Christianity”

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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 ... Read more on Catholic.com