[Remastered] Podcast: Jamie Dangers on "Pro-Life Advocacy in a Post-Dobbs World"

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:04 Greetings and welcome to another edition of the Faithful Presence podcast. I am your host, Reverend Michael Langer, founder and president of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders working in the public square to flourish as they participate in Christ’s mission of making all things new. We do that through providing spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational,

0:31 ideological, cultural, and evangelical formation, and by supporting the local church in equipping their members for Christ-centered engagement in the public square. In other words, whole life discipleship in the whole of life for for the whole of the public square. Hey, it’s great to be back with you. We’re getting back into the groove of podcasts.

0:56 I hope you have had a chance to catch some of our recent podcasts, including the one that we recorded most recently with Dr. Bill Peel. who attended the Luzon conference back a few months ago. He spoke at length about faith and work and evangelism in the workplace that does

1:15 not start and end with tracks left in the bathroom and awkward conversations, but actually on work done well and real relationships. Before I introduce today’s guests, I wanted to encourage you to let us know if you are interested in joining a discipleship cohort here in Washington or one of our online versions.

1:37 We also are available for pastoral conversations, which I was describing to our guests have kind of gone up for us like a hockey stick since the inauguration. That’s just the reality of what happens every time there’s a transition. So please, you know, let us know how we can serve you.

1:56 With that said, I’d like to welcome to the show today my friend Jamie Dangers. Jamie serves as the Director of Federal Affairs for the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. In this role, Jamie leads the federal affairs team to advance the legislative priorities of SBA in the federal government by maintaining relationships and offering pro-life policy expertise.

2:21 Before coming to SBA, Jamie worked on Capitol Hill where she led on pro-life and religious freedom legislation issues for a member of Congress. Additionally, she has worked for pro-life nonprofits in both Washington, D.C. and Colorado Springs. Jamie holds a Master of Arts in Government from Hillsdale College, one of our favorites,

2:44 and her undergraduate degree from John Brown University. Alongside her pro-life work at SBA, Jamie is also on the board of directors of AAPLOG Action, which is the advocacy arm of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Wow, Jamie, that’s pretty impressive. Welcome to the podcast. How the heck are you?

3:15 I am doing well. It’s really good to see you and good to talk with you.

3:18 Thanks for having me. Of course. So, um, We met when you were on the Hill, and I forget, maybe you don’t want to mention, but you were working on the House side. Is that right?

3:30 I was, yes.

3:32 Okay. And you were there working for that member, but if I remember our conversations correctly, you were going back and forth to other offices, kind of as like a liaison, communicating with other offices. You weren’t just like, I’m only concerned about what this member is doing. Is that…

3:52 Well, I worked for one particular member of Congress, but I was able to work with a lot of different offices as we were trying to work on areas related to the life issue and international religious freedom and things like that.

4:06 Okay. Oh, international religious freedom. We like that too. We should schedule a whole other podcast where we just talk about international religious freedom. So, you know, here’s the thing. Maybe this whole thing is anticlimactic and you’ll tell me if it is. I seem to remember that Roe v. Wade got overturned, like, I don’t know,

4:26 two and a half years ago. So… What do you do now? Isn’t like the pro-life issue is just like it’s finished, right? There’s nothing else to do. We just don’t have that as an issue anymore, right?

4:40 I wish that were the case. I wish I had worked myself out of a job when Roe was overturned. But no, what we like to say around here at SBA is that the overturning of Roe was the end of the beginning of the fight. It actually gave us permission now to…

5:00 to fight to enact good laws to protect moms and babies that we didn’t have when abortion was considered a constitutional right.

5:10 Okay, so before we kind of get into like your journey to the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, My understanding, at least what I learned about Susan B. Anthony in school, was that she was a suffragette. She was all about women’s rights and getting women the right to vote. Tell us, how did the connection with Susan B.

5:32 Anthony come to be associated with a pro-life initiative?

5:37 Yeah, she is mostly known for what you said, being a suffragette. But she was also very concerned about the life issue. And she was very vocal about the fact that abortion is actually a tragedy and it’s not good for women. So she advocated against abortion as well.

5:54 And our founders saw her as really a hero and a trailblazer in being a woman leading on the issue of life.

6:05 Okay, so, you know, I went to school, I went to, I was probably in first grade, maybe, kindergarten or first grade, when Roe v. Wade was passed, right? So, you know, one of the things I was going to mention to you, which I’m sure you know, is that there’s really nobody alive today that’s in childbearing years that

6:28 that really knew anything other than Roe v. Wade. Like it’s just, they grew up, this was always a thing. It’s not something new that happened. And so I wonder if, because I’d never heard anything at all about Susan B. Anthony being pro-life and caring about pro-life, is there,

6:53 would you say that maybe there’s a bit of revisionist history as far as, or maybe editing of history about what gets taught in our schools about Susan B. Anthony that for many years omitted the fact that she was very, very concerned about the life issue.

7:16 Well, I think she’s, you know, mostly known for, I guess, mostly what’s taught in school is what she helped accomplish, which was getting the right to vote for women. So maybe that’s why that is more what is taught in schools. And also it’s not super convenient for people who think that feminists should be

7:41 pro-abortion to see that actually, no, here was someone leading in women’s rights who was saying abortion is bad for women. So it’s not convenient for people who like only that side of the narrative.

7:58 Okay. So tell us a little bit about your kind of your path to Susan B. Anthony, the work of Susan B. Anthony and kind of, yeah, just kind of set us up. And then I want to take a turn and talk about how your mission has really gone from say, what’s happening in Washington, D.C., to now, what,

8:18 50 plus states, which is where you’re doing your work. So tell us a little bit about the journey to how you went from Hillsdale College to the Hill and then the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group.

8:30 So it’s a roundabout story for sure. I actually grew up as a missionary kid overseas in Uganda, and Washington, D.C. was not on my mind. It was not… I was not thinking in terms of I want to be part of a political organization or involved in the United States government.

8:52 But the ministry that my family was a part of was orphan care ministry. And so we just grew up surrounded by, you know, service and care and, and trying to bring, um, life and dignity to forgotten and vulnerable kids. So, um, that was, those were kind of, I think the seeds that were planted.

9:18 Abortion was not an issue that we really dealt with, uh, head on in Uganda. There were a host of other issues that we were dealing with, but for whatever reason, um, We would be on home assignments every four years in the states, and that happened to be the presidential election years.

9:39 And so my parents would always talk us through how they were voting and what issues were. And the only one I remember is the life issue. That’s all I remember. And so even though it wasn’t really part of our lives, it wasn’t something that touched my family immediately,

9:59 It kind of was always in the back of my mind of something I really cared about. And after college, I was working on staff at my church in Colorado Springs. Loved that. Absolutely loved the direct ministry. I was in youth ministry and communications there and loved that.

10:18 But just could not get rid of this feeling that I was supposed to do something wrong. about the life issue. And I didn’t know what that would mean. I had no knowledge of this world up here in DC. But eventually I just, it was so heavy on my heart.

10:38 So I took a leave of absence from my job at church, came out to DC and interned for a summer.

10:45 Wow.

10:45 Because I was trying to discern, is this just something that I should care about and pray about? Or is this actually something the Lord is calling me to do something about? And so that summer is when, that was in 2011. That’s when I really…

11:05 understood this lord is changing the course or my path or at least leading me to the next thing and um so i moved out here in 2013 in order to work on the life issue and as you said we met on the hill um i was working for a pro-life member of congress and um i uh

11:28 was working on many issues, including the life issue. Um, and then this job opened up six years ago and it was an opportunity to work with an organization and people that I really, really respected, um, and could work on this issue exclusively, which was really my heart. So I’ve been at SBA now. Yeah.

11:49 Almost, almost six years this spring.

11:51 Oh my word. And, and what, How does Susan B. Anthony do their work, and how does it differ from other pro-life policy advocacy groups that are in Washington? Because you’re not the only one, correct?

12:07 Correct. Yeah, there are a lot of pro-life groups, and everyone has kind of their own niche. And SBA is… is a political organization. I work on the policy arm of the political organization, but we really view the two as inseparable because in order to pass good policies and good laws,

12:32 you have to have good people in positions of authority. And so we actually started as a political organization that then added on the policy arm, whereas a lot of groups go the opposite way. They are more policy or more political, but not as much Arm in arm as kind of how we approach things.

12:58 So for our listeners who aren’t in Washington, make the distinction between political and policy and how that fits into, you know, you and I will use the words advocacy, but what most people like to say is, oh, so you’re a lobbyist, right? Because that’s the term. So kind of unpack like the difference between those words.

13:24 Yeah, so I am a lobbyist, which I realize is often a dirty word to people.

13:29 It’s not a dirty word.

13:30 It doesn’t have to be.

13:33 No, and it shouldn’t be. It’s important.

13:35 No, because we are advocating for things. So politics is more the candidate side of things. It’s endorsing people for office. It’s… Supporting their campaigns, prepping them on the campaign trail, canvassing, going door to door, either for or against a person or an issue. Sometimes we will endorse candidates.

14:06 And so it’s the whole process of getting someone into elected office, whether it’s at the state level or up here at the federal level where I am. And then the policy side, where I’m at, is working with Congress and working with folks in the administration to figure out

14:31 what things in law and what things in policy through executive action through the administration can be strengthened or fixed or passed in order to promote and protect life. So I, I am not involved in the endorsement or the campaign side of things, but our political team does that.

14:58 And then they hand people off to us on the policy side of things. Once the, once the, someone is here, then we get to work with them. We know they’re pro-life, then we go and we figure out what is important to them, where can we work together in order to get good policies enacted.

15:16 Okay, and how is what Susan B. Anthony is concerned about differ from some of the other, I would call maybe adjacent work that’s happening?

15:27 Adjacent in the life.

15:29 In the pro-life issue, yeah.

15:31 Yeah, I mean, some groups are more experts on the legal side of things. Like, they are more involved in litigation and in writing the briefs and things for various people. cases that come up some are more involved in grassroots um education for students or especially on college campuses or that sort of thing um some are not only

16:02 specific to the life issue so they they look at a lot broader uh range of issue areas um and at sba we are the political side of things it’s SBA is the biggest political pro-life organization. And then we use that. We use our influence there in order to then be able to work with people on the

16:32 policy side once they’re in office.

16:35 Okay. I remember when I was still pastoring, So we did some, I don’t know, collaboration with the local pregnancy center, right? And one of their big things was they had one of those 3D ultrasounds. And so their whole thing was they would, you know, want to, and it was a university town. So there’s all of that, right?

17:00 Right. I think the oldest, one of the oldest abortion clinics in, was it east or west? One of the oldest abortion clinics west of the Mississippi, the Emma Goldman Clinic was in Iowa City. And I know that they were really excited about that because they would say, well, you know,

17:24 if we can get somebody in here and then we can give them a 3D picture. of of a child like it’s like you can’t look at that and go well i don’t really know what that is like you know no that’s that’s clearly that’s clearly a little tiny

17:40 human um and you know so when i asked them like oh you know where did you get this and they said oh we got it from the knights of columbus and um you know i know that a number a number of our listeners will be aware of the fact

17:54 that the Catholic community has been involved in this for a very long time. But talk a little bit, because I know that when members of our church would go to these various events, they would always kind of be struck by, wait, why are there Catholics here? I would have to say, well, um, so here’s the thing.

18:18 Uh, yeah, they’ve been, they’ve been opposed to this forever all over the world. They’ve been doing this work. Um, evangelicalism has kind of, you know, the kind of the, as we would experience it, kind of like the, um, kind of Republican fusion of the evangelical movement, the Catholics were here and they’re not a part of that conversation.

18:43 They’ve been here like the entire time. How much of your work is with Catholic folks, Catholic candidates, Catholic groups that are concerned about this issue? How does that look for you?

19:00 Yeah, it is amazing. As an evangelical myself, I am often in the minority when it comes to people of faith in the pro-life movement. There are so many Catholics up here. We work very closely with folks in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. We work with folks from Catholic Vote, with Priests for Life.

19:22 We work with all kinds of organizations that are… that are Catholic. But then we also work with a lot of groups. I mean, SBA itself is not technically a faith-based organization. We are staffed by people of faith. But there are so many Christians, Protestants and Catholic in this movement. And yeah, I mean, for a long time,

19:54 Catholics have, in a lot of ways, put evangelicals to shame in how how much they have led on this issue, and we’re trying to play catch up in some ways.

20:05 Yeah, and we were talking a little bit beforehand that, you know, there is this, I would say there’s this perception in the, I would say maybe in the public square that, okay, well, at some point in the early 1980s, various political entities decided to make abortion an issue to kind of, you know,

20:28 gel together the evangelical movement within the Republican political party. And while that might be accurate, I’m not saying it is or isn’t accurate, but one of the things we were talking about beforehand is this has been an issue for Christians of all persuasions for 2,000 years. And as evidence to that, I have this wonderful book here.

20:57 If you’re watching on our YouTube feed, I have a wonderful book here called The Apostolic Fathers, translated by J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer. It’s wonderful. It’s got a bunch of early Christian documents. One of them is a document called the Didache, which was, as best as we know, scholars probably date this somewhere around 80 AD, which would,

21:23 if that’s the case, would put it earlier than one of the latest dates of the book of Revelation. So this is the reason it’s not in scripture. It’s not because it was seen as early Christians as being in error, but in being written by somebody who they either couldn’t, they didn’t know who it was,

21:43 but more likely that they didn’t know that that person didn’t have firsthand account with Christ, which was really the determining factor. But what this was done is it was used as part of a kind of a multi-year discipleship plan. So that when new converts, largely Greek converts, would convert to Christianity,

22:07 one of the questions that they would have is, okay, well, I’ve converted, I’ve put my faith in Christ. Now tell me, what is it that I think and how is that different than Greek thought? And so this comes from the Didache. This says regarding his teaching on the second commandment, it says,

22:24 The second commandment of the teaching is you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys, you shall not be sexually promiscuous, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not engage in sorcery, you shall not abort a child or commit infanticize. And then, or I’m sorry, infanticide.

22:45 And then probably about 50 years later, so we’re in the early 100s, we have a document called the Shepherd of Hermes, which is also, I’m sorry, we have a document called the Epistle of Barnabas, which was also used as a discipleship document. And it says… I’d be interested to hear, and I’m sure you hear this pretty regularly,

23:39 how do you respond when somebody says, this really isn’t a Christian issue, this is just a co-opted issue for politics sake? Does the Susan B. Anthony, do you guys have like a, okay, well, let us help you here?

23:52 That’s a really good question. And I love hearing how clear that is right from the beginning of the church.

24:00 Yes.

24:00 I mean… since we are typically speaking in a secular environment, um, we often just take the approach of science, which as we know, all truth is God’s truth. And science shows the humanity of the unborn right from the beginning. So it’s like the two are very, are perfectly complimentary. Um, and, um,

24:28 while I had not heard those documents before, it doesn’t surprise me because if you look at, you know, all we learn throughout scripture is how the Lord has created each human with dignity as an image bearer of himself. And so that means that there is value in every single human life.

24:51 He knit us together in our mother’s womb. That is a very intentional thing. personal act and so if that is true and we believe that it is true then how we treat every person from the very beginning is actually a it’s a theological matter

25:10 as well as a moral issue and a science issue and a medical issue all of those things um It is not, yes, it has become politicized in a lot of ways, but the issue itself is, it isn’t a political issue at its heart.

25:33 It has been co-opted in some ways, but it isn’t at its core a political issue.

25:40 Yeah. So let, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about this. I remember was it probably was the 20, probably the 2016 election. At the time, I believe there was a female Democratic candidate running for the presidency. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton. I mean, she was running, but it wasn’t her who did this. But in an event in Iowa,

26:08 this particular candidate said, you know, was asked a question about the pro-life issue, or I’m sorry, about the pro-choice issue. I want a world where abortion is safe, rare, and legal. And within a day, she had to retract her statement because people pulled her aside and said, yeah, we don’t agree with that anymore.

26:41 And the response was, well, what part of it don’t we agree with? Yeah, you can’t say rare. That’s not our position. It’s safe and legal, yes, rare, no, that’s actually, that’s kind of offensive and you’re gonna be in trouble if you do that. Talk a little bit about how just even the use of language has changed.

27:03 I think everybody is aware that we are polarizing pretty quickly. And a lot of that has to do with the use of language. And even in this issue, it’s pro-life versus pro-choice, right? The entire thing is both people are for something. but one’s choice and one’s one’s life.

27:24 And then even within that, it seems like the debate has changed. How do you guys navigate just the changes of language and help us understand what, what happened there on the democratic side where that got dropped?

27:40 It’s so, it’s so disappointing how, uh, When you look at Democrats in the nation, so many of them actually are pro-life. But when you look at the Democrats who make it to Congress, they are no longer allowed to be pro-life. The way the party has,

28:08 the way Nancy Pelosi and others kind of moved their party into more of a pro-abortion party, it’s actually not reflective of your general voter. It’s much more extreme. And it’s really sad because even back when Obamacare was being passed, so not that long ago, there were dozens of pro-life Democrats in Congress.

28:43 And now, I’m not sure that there are any. I have not, I am not, there are some who say some things but who do not vote in a pro-life way. There are none. And SBA used to campaign for pro-life Democrats where we could find them. We can’t find them anymore. And it’s like, as you said, with language,

29:07 it’s like if they say we want it to be rare, then that makes it sound like it’s not a good thing. And so we can’t say that anymore because we’re trying to make abortion sound like a good thing. And we also can’t talk about women regretting abortion because that sounds like there’s something to regret.

29:29 And there’s so many words and things that are no longer allowed in that space. Words that humanize the child. You know, it is very… What’s the word? They try to use very clinical, kind of sanitized language and also very rights autonomy oriented language in order

30:01 to kind of bypass part of the issue that we’re actually talking about an unborn human child. And if you can ignore that, then you can have an argument on some of the tangential things. But if you ignore that, then you are ignoring an entire class of persons. And yeah,

30:25 the language is just really erasing babies and not allowing for the possibility that this is actually harming women and not good for them.

30:38 Yeah. And and so, you know, I think you’ve done a really good job of framing that. I think my my own experience would be that it does seem as though in the way that the kind of the we’ll call it the Democratic Party has kind of tightened up their language and made it more restrictive.

30:57 that the Republican Party has done a very similar thing in the opposite direction, which is you’re not pro-life unless you will agree that abortion is wrong in every situation. You have to just, it can never happen. And that, again, there’s no middle, right? And I think that the statistics that you’re quoting,

31:24 when you ask most Americans what do they think, And most Americans say, yeah, I think abortion should be, I mean, I think most of them would have said, hey, yeah, it should be very rare. There should be restrictions. There should be parental notifications. All of these things are, those are good things. And And that we’ve,

31:47 on kind of both sides, you’ve kind of seen this, I would say, entrenchment in a way that makes, I would say, what do you call it? The common sense approach, maybe the middle approach, difficult. Have you felt that in your work in Washington?

32:04 Yeah, I think I would take a slightly different measure of things. I think Before Roe was overturned, it was much more of a homogenous view on the Republican side. Like everyone was pro-life and they could all be they could all co-sponsor the same bills. They could all support the same bills like no late term abortion,

32:28 no taxpayer funding for abortion. No. Well, a lot of people were even. comfortable supporting no abortion when a child’s heartbeat can be detected. Some people would even be comfortable saying no abortion at all in any circumstances from the beginning. But once Roe was overturned and laws started actually being enacted in various

32:53 states at different levels in the rubber pit road, then people started thinking, oh, this isn’t theoretical anymore. What do I actually believe?

33:05 Right. That’s right. And that happened on both sides.

33:08 Yes, that’s true. And so now it’s there. It seems to be a lot more, um, there’s a lot more variety, I would say, within the Republican Party about what it means to be pro-life. I think in general, everyone is still comfortable saying we shouldn’t have taxpayer funding for abortion.

33:31 But beyond that, it’s a little harder to nail down what the consensus is up here in Congress. We’ve run polls for many years in the States, like among just regular people to see where they fall. And you’re right. Most Americans, um, are very opposed to late term abortion, but they want abortion to be available in certain circumstances.

33:56 And so, um, we have taken the approach of, well, let’s start there and start. You can’t You can’t change a culture that has been formed by 49 years of Roe telling them that abortion is good with a ruling. It doesn’t work that way. Consciences have been formed and lifestyles have been formed by 49 years of Roe.

34:26 This is an excellent point you’re making.

34:28 Yeah. So you can’t just say, you can’t just expect Americans to accept, even though we would love we are working towards this and you can’t just have an entire culture just say, Oh yeah, it’s no longer right. Therefore we’re going to pass laws ending abortion. Like consciences have been scarred for so long.

34:48 And so we have to start retraining and, and resensitizing people to this is what abortion is. And this is why it’s not good for women. It’s not good for babies. It’s not good for society. So it’s, Yeah, we try to take an incremental approach to try to get out where what are the things

35:12 that Americans really are uncomfortable with? OK, they’re uncomfortable with late term abortion. Let’s start there.

35:19 Right. That’s right.

35:20 And then and then keep working and then keep working.

35:23 Yeah, I think it was in one of these more recent debates, somebody actually brought this up, this idea of late-term abortions and just watching the people who were in favor of abortion double down on late-term abortions. It was like, I remember thinking to myself, okay, That right there is a signal that this conversation has gotten completely unmoored

35:57 from what the public even thinks. It’s no longer, oh, the public thinks this. It was kind of like, we don’t care what the public thinks anymore. We have embraced this… this thing. And we all have to say it. We’re all going to say it in lockstep.

36:15 And even when you ask me a question about this, I’m just going to say, yeah, absolutely. Up until, you know, five minutes before the baby’s born. And I just thought, man, at this point, we have ditched science and we’ve ditched the public. Now we’re just about making an ideological political statement over which the women

36:44 and the children become the casualties. Right. That’s really, really the situation that’s happening there. You know, I’ve told you before, and it’s on our website, so this is not private information. You know, I was born in 1967, which means I was conceived in 1966. And let’s just say that my mother was strongly encouraged by

37:12 to, uh, end her pregnancy with me. Um, and it wasn’t, I mean, abortion was illegal then, but they did happen. Right. Um, and you know, so I wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t said, Hey, you know, I, I really want this baby. I’m gonna do everything I can to have the baby.

37:33 And then, you know, you flash forward 12 years after I was born. Abortion is legal. My mother had remarried, just this wonderful man. I’ve told this story before on the podcast. My full biological brother and I were living with my mom and her husband, who’s now my adopted dad. And they had two children of their own.

37:57 And then in 1979, my, my, my dad, my, my adopted dad had a massive brain injury in, in the middle of summer. And then about six months later, they lost a child to crib death. And my mother really never recovered from that. It just, it, it devastated her as, as something like that would,

38:18 those two things happening kind of back to back. And I remember very clearly about a year after that, listening to my mother on the phone describing the procedure that she had had that day to her sister to end a pregnancy. And so the reason I wrote the piece that I wrote that’s on our website was a number

38:40 of evangelical churches after Dobbs was passed and Roe was overturned. did what I think is just reprehensible and that is they celebrated. They like celebrated in a way that I, I felt like took away from the emotional impact of what had happened for some of these women, right? Women who’d had abortions. And, you know,

39:06 I think about women like my mom for whom that seemed like the best possible decision to that a person could make in that situation. And we both would say, Hey, you know, it was wrong. Um, but then there are so many pictures on the news of these women who are trying to go to,

39:25 to get an abortion and, and the, the way that they encounter Christians, shall we say is, um, not helpful. And the kind of triumphalistic attitude I think that some Christians took on this was also not helpful. Tell us a little bit about how do you navigate those conversations when maybe you find yourself, you know,

39:50 across from a group or across from, you know, some folks who want to be, shall we say, a little bit more belligerent or militant about the way that they’re presenting the pro-life issue? Do you, do you have some way of like working through with them?

40:06 Like, okay, here’s, here’s what, here’s the way we want to talk about this.

40:09 I think a lot of it goes back to those of us in the, in the pro-life movement who believe that every life has value, that extends to the moms. And that’s not just the unborn child. That’s the moms, that’s the siblings, that’s the dads, that’s everyone.

40:31 And so the way we advocate has to be dignifying of people who have had abortions, of people who are considering abortions, of people who are in really tough situations that, like your mom, felt like that was the only thing they could do, even if they didn’t want to do it.

40:55 And so we always try to… Compassion is so important. And it’s not just a talking point. It’s a reality. We want to care for these moms so that even if abortion is never made illegal… It isn’t the thing that is happening because moms are being cared for,

41:23 because they’re not being put in these situations that lead them to making that decision. And so a lot of it is just what are we doing to dignify and support and care for moms? moms, pregnant and parenting moms as well. And a lot of that is on an individual basis. A lot of it is through churches.

41:47 Some of it can be through policy. And where that can be done through policy, we support that. I was having conversations just today on issues like child tax credit and adoption tax credit, unborn child tax credit. What are creative ways that you can lessen the burdens on the people who are making tough decisions.

42:10 But I think it all, I mean for those of us who are believers, it just all comes back to Just like baby is made in the image of God, so is the mom. So how are we treating that person?

42:21 Yeah, that’s so helpful. You know, you’ve said several times during our time together that, you know, this is an issue, that this issue impacts the health of the mother. And I don’t know that a lot of folks kind of understand how this, what the long-term impacts are.

42:44 for a woman who makes this decision and why it isn’t just about, you know, the baby, the unborn child, or maybe a situational thing like, oh, this is a really horrible situation. You need to not have this child at this time, you know, maybe another time.

43:04 what are the medically known and objectively tested implications for a woman who’s considering having an abortion or who’s had an abortion?

43:19 It’s a good question. And a lot of those studies are suppressed and not funded because, again, they would expose inconvenient truths. But we do know And I can even get you some of these resources later, especially, I mean, mental health impacts after abortion is very, very real. The higher rates of suicide and depression are very real.

43:48 There are some… There are some studies that show linkages to things like breast cancer, but also the abortion itself is not safe. There are so many instances where a woman has had an abortion and it has affected her future fertility or it has caused complications that maybe they’re short term, maybe they are long term.

44:12 And especially now with abortion drugs being sent through the mail without any kind of medical information, oversight without any kind of medical screening we’re seeing more and more um really unnecessary harms um for women so um because abortion drugs are being sent through the mail and women aren’t getting screened that means they’re not being

44:40 screened for ectopic pregnancies and the um what women are told to expect when they are having an abortion after chemical abortion drugs are similar to the symptoms of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. So they don’t necessarily know when to go to the emergency room.

44:59 And that can be extremely dangerous when they think this is how it’s supposed to be. And yet they’re suffering this really really serious medical issue. A lot of women don’t know how far along they are. A lot of times we’re seeing in more and more situations now, because of the really lax regulations on these abortion drugs,

45:27 people are ordering the pills who are themselves not pregnant. And then they are slipping them into drinks of people who are. Whether that’s a boyfriend who doesn’t want his girlfriend’s baby. Whether it’s a jealous ex-girlfriend who is slipping it into the drink of the current girlfriend. Whether it is a mom who is forcing her teenage daughter.

45:50 These are real stories. These aren’t hypotheticals. These are actual stories.

45:55 I’ve read some of these. Yeah.

45:58 So there’s such a coercive effect. There are ongoing cases of people who have forced these abortions on others. Um, there, so anyway, there, the risks from abortions of hemorrhage of future fertility issues. Oh, the other thing is, um, when, when moms are actually getting good prenatal care, they get their RH tested, right?

46:29 They, because they need to know if they need Rogan. Well, if you’re getting abortion drugs through the mail, no one’s doing that. And so there are people who take the abortion drugs and may not have complications from the abortion itself, but then later when they try to get pregnant, they find out that they should have had Rogan,

46:49 and now they are having miscarriages as a result. And it’s devastating. They’re not told any of these things. There’s no real informed consent where the woman is actually being able to weigh the actual risks. And so it’s I’m sorry, I could go on.

47:09 I know. There’s a bunch of stuff I still want to get to. And this is so wonderful. One of the things that I think has been a hot topic on top of this has been the IVF. What work do you do in that space? What do your policy conversations look like? Because I think that the

47:31 That IVF ruling, I think, threw everybody. And people seem to be scrambling like, okay, wait a second. What just happened? What’s going to happen to these people in my district? I mean, it was immediate, the response. Just walk us through kind of what happened and what role or how did Susan B. Anthony,

47:56 how did you guys help navigate that?

47:59 Yeah, that was interesting. A lot happened. But it was also very misunderstood what happened. So essentially, There was a clinic, an IVF clinic. Someone who was not allowed to be there came into the back, somehow got through and opened a freezer where there were embryos being preserved and dropped them on the floor and destroyed someone’s babies.

48:33 And so the parents of those embryos sued. And what the state Supreme Court decided was that these embryos are more than property. And so they could be, the parents could get justice for having lost these embryos. And it wasn’t just property that they had lost. There was actual humanity involved.

49:03 Um, and so that’s what the case was about. It was about protecting, it was about getting justice for the parents whose embryos were lost. But of course it spun up into, well, now if it does that mean IVF is no longer allowed because if we’re, if we’re saying embryos are humans, well,

49:22 I mean, I believe, yes, an embryo is a human. However, the case was not saying that embryos, that IVF can’t happen. It was saying don’t destroy the embryos because they’re human.

49:33 But that creates a huge financial risk then, because that’s really what motivated this. The markets… said, okay, wait a second, hold on. If something goes wrong with our machine and our backup generator and we lose this stuff, we’re potentially going to all go to jail. Wait, what just happened?

49:57 And I remember people kind of on the other side were like, okay, so you wanted pro-life. Here’s how this works. Here’s how this is gonna play itself out. Kind of was it like, how you like me now? Like, right. And so then there was all of this chaos. Yeah.

50:13 So kind of walk us through kind of like how that got, I would say, resolved. Kind of.

50:23 Well, what then happened was the state passed a law basically exempting the IVF industry from liability, which does not serve parents and does not serve embryos. It only protected the industry rather than the parents who are aching to have kids and have gone through really difficult processes to get there.

50:50 At SBA, we don’t take a position on IVF itself. we do take a position on the destruction of embryos. And there are ways you can do IVF without the needless destruction of embryos. And so our stance on IVF is more, how can we do this in a more ethical way where you aren’t just creating a whole

51:20 bunch of embryos that most of them will not be used, and so they will be frozen forever or destroyed, or they will be picked through to see which ones are genetically perfect or better, and then the others are destroyed. But we want parents to be protected as well.

51:37 There are horror stories of embryos being implanted in the wrong parents, in the wrong mom. And they find out after the baby’s born that actually this wasn’t their baby, and now what do they do? So regulations are good for parents and they’re good for the embryos.

51:57 So it has been tumultuous, I would say, on that issue up here. A lot of folks are saying… being pro-IVF is being pro-life because it means more babies. Others will say being pro-IVF is not pro-life because you’re creating and destroying embryos. It is an ethically very tricky, very complicated issue.

52:30 And we just, again, try to have a consistent relationship advocacy that if it’s a life, and we believe it is, then that life should be protected. So be careful that you’re not creating ones just to destroy them.

52:48 Yeah, and I want to just reiterate that Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is not a Christian organization, right? So you’re not speaking. I want to just make sure that people are hearing that. But the reason we’re having you on the podcast is because, one,

53:04 you are a Christian person serving and leading in the public square on an important issue. And we’ve had numerous people on the podcast saying, who are working for organizations that are not inherently Christian organizations. But one of the things that we’re trying to do is encourage Christians to actually

53:23 step forward and step into the public square and navigate this. And so I certainly appreciate that part of it. I want to ask probably what I would say it’s kind of like the big defeater question, which is, okay, well, what about what about rape and incest? Like, what do we do with that? Because that is,

53:43 that is the, as you alluded to earlier, that’s like the rubber meets the road thing. Yeah. Right. So maybe walk us through how that conversation maybe would play itself out in a policy conversation, but maybe we could start with, of all of the abortions that would occur, like, let’s say the abortions that occurred in 2022,

54:02 what percentage of those if you know, are the result of rape and incest, right? Because that’s really the big thing is, hey, what about rape and incest? And in the same way that there are statistics for late-term abortions, there’s statistics for rape and incest. So give us a picture of what that block, what that number looks like.

54:28 Yeah. The actual numbers are hard to come by, but it is a very, very low percentage. So I’ve heard around 1%. that it could be a little bit up from there, a little bit down from there, because again, the reporting is not, not good. But it is the exception.

54:46 It is not the rule when it comes to the vast majority of abortions that take place.

54:53 So if, if, if, if somebody was, was willing to say, or got to the place where they said, okay, well, I would be, I would be willing to agree on, on a rule that would ban abortion in the in the third trimester and, uh, and, and also allow, or I’m sorry,

55:13 and allow for it in the cases of rape and incest right there. I think I, you just said it, you’re basically eliminating 99% of abortions, right? The, the, well, but we have to have this exception. And when that exception is offered, well, okay, well let’s, let’s do that then. Right. We’ll agree to no late term abortions on,

55:37 And it’s typically that’s rejected. And the same thing with like, okay, well, let’s just go with rape and incest then. Okay, well, you’ve just wiped out 99% of abortions because the number really isn’t that big.

55:51 I think there’s a way of talking about the rape and incest issue where you can advocate for laws that do or don’t have those exceptions without being callous about the fact that these are real situations, real painful situations that happen. I don’t know that I answered that very well, but… No, here’s the thing I wanted to say.

56:13 This, and this is one of the reasons why I like you a lot, like I enjoy our time together, is this is the way that Christians should think about this issue, which is, it’s really complicated. This is not just a, oh, well, you know, the Bible says it’s wrong, so you can never do it,

56:38 and we need to outlaw everything tomorrow, and you’re going in to kill a child. Please go away and don’t talk anymore because you have not done justice to the dynamics of the issue. And I think what was wonderful, just watching you for like five or six minutes say, oh, well, you know,

57:02 but then that’s not exactly the right way. It’s this way. You know, you’re a thoughtful person, Jamie, right? You have a master’s degree. You’ve been in this space for a long time, working for a long time with a lot of candidates. And I think the thing that is beautiful is that what you just did is represented

57:23 the way that Christians should think about this. Even for pastors to be able to talk about this, right? Instead of, as I alluded to a little while ago, instead of getting up and having this triumphal thing of like, yay, we win. Those evil people now have lost. Man,

57:42 that is so not the most helpful thing you can say to the folks who are sitting there who’ve had an abortion or have just found out that they’re pregnant. And they’re like, I have no idea. what I’m going to do next. Like this pregnancy is going to alter the course of my life.

58:05 And my pastor just celebrated and threw me, kind of threw me and anybody else who’s thinking about this under the bus. So I appreciate just why, if you’re listening only, man, watch this on YouTube and you’re going to watch a Christian do what Christians do, which is just wrestle with the fact that this is a difficult situation.

58:30 So thank you for that. I appreciate it because it’s not easy. So tell us what a 50-state game plan looks like in our final minutes, right? Because that’s what you’ve got now is a 50-state game plan, don’t you?

58:45 Oh, my word, yes. Our battlefront went from the Supreme Court to all 50 states. And the nation. I can’t even imagine.

58:55 I cannot even imagine what that was like.

58:58 It’s been crazy. Over half of the states now have enacted pro-life laws of some sort. Some of them are through all nine months with exceptions. Some of them are when a heartbeat can be detected. Some of them are around 12 or 15 weeks. And then

59:20 The other half of the state, a lot of them have gone the exact opposite direction. I came here from Colorado. They have gone the opposite direction. New York has gone the opposite direction, where they are not only putting abortion as a constitutional right in their state constitution through ballot measures, but they’re also…

59:46 they have funding streams to bring people in from pro-life states to get abortions, um, now, and they’re passing so-called shield laws, which, um, like for example, in New York, they passed a shield law, which means that abortion doctors in New York can mail abortion drugs into pro-life states and they’ll be completely, um,

1:00:10 free from any kind of liability. Right now, there is a case, um, Louisiana, this is one of the stories I kind of alluded to earlier. A teenager got pregnant, was actually excited about it, was planning a gender reveal party. Her mom was not happy about it. Her mom ordered abortion drugs from an abortion doctor in New York.

1:00:35 The doctor sent the drugs to the mom who was not pregnant and the mom forced her daughter to take these drugs, which ended the life of her child and ended up with the teenager in the emergency room with serious complications. It’s a horrifying story. So in Louisiana, they tried suing,

1:00:56 they are suing the doctor in New York for doing this illegal thing and hurting one of their own. But the shield law in New York, is preventing Louisiana from holding that doctor accountable. Louisiana will not allow, New York will not allow Louisiana to hold that doctor accountable.

1:01:22 They will not extradite her to Louisiana for any of this litigation. And so they’re really, again, putting women and girls in danger for the sake of having an abortion above all agenda. So in the 50 states, we’re doing what we can to not only pass pro-life laws,

1:01:47 And also help the state health departments and attorneys general offices to explain what those laws mean and what they don’t mean, because there are so many lies out there about what the laws mean. I’m sure you’ve heard over and over again that pro-life laws mean women can no longer get miscarriage care and can no longer get,

1:02:09 you know, just basic. legitimate care. And that is not true. Every single state that has passed a pro-life law allows for doctors to act in emergency situations, even if that means actually having to end the life of the child in order to save the life of the mother. That is legal everywhere. Miscarriage care is legal everywhere.

1:02:32 But the lies are being spread to the tune of many, many millions of dollars. And so we’re working hard to make sure that not only can states pass good pro-life laws, but they can defend them and let women know, no, please come for your miscarriage care. Please come for your prenatal appointments. Those are good things.

1:02:53 Those are healthy things and they’re legal. And then of course, because of the fact that half the states allow abortion, half the states have limits on abortion, That means abortions are still happening. There’s still about a million abortions happening every year in the states. And maybe where they’re happening has shifted, but they are still happening.

1:03:20 And so what can we do at the federal level to protect the unborn? That’s a long-term strategy. It’s going to take a while because, of course, we need 60 votes in the Senate to get anything passed. but we’re working on it. We’re trying to stop the $2 million that goes to Planned Parenthood every single

1:03:42 day that pops up the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood is responsible for about 40% of all abortions that happen in the States and they have really terrible clinic regulations and standards of care for women. So the 50 states thing is complicated. Some of it is trying to stop bad things.

1:04:05 Some of it is trying to get good things happening. And a lot of it is just trying to set the record straight on what actually is and is not happening.

1:04:14 Yeah. As you wrap up, just a couple of things. One of the things that I’m aware of is that before this was overturned, and maybe even still now, there have been attempts to legislate that clinics, facilities that are performing abortions, would have to… I don’t even know what the phrase is,

1:04:40 but they basically have to meet a certain level of medical criteria. So if I split my lip open or break my arm or whatever, and I’m like, okay, well, I’m going to go to the Instacare place right down the street, and they’re going to look at me and go, oh, yeah, we’ll just stitch that up right here.

1:04:56 It’s no problem. We’ve got a doctor on staff. Just do a few stitches. We’re good. See you later. Here’s some aspirin. You sprained your ankle. We’ll wrap it and have some aspirin. So there’s a whole… vetting process, a whole accountability process, a whole series of regulations that govern what they do there and the medical level

1:05:19 of expertise that has to be there. And there have been legislative moves to say, okay, well, let’s at least get those same level of criteria that qualifications for abortion clinics and again the the the response is like oh no no

1:05:40 no we we don’t want that no it can you it like i know that we’re we’re running up against a time here but how in the world does that happen how do you say hey um We want abortion to be safe and legal. But by safe,

1:06:00 we mean not regulated at all as far as actually having the same criteria that they have down the street at the Instacare place.

1:06:10 Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s stunning what they can get away with.

1:06:16 I was shocked. I was like, wait, what?

1:06:19 What? I think a lot of this came from the… pre-Dobbs era we were living in, under Planned Parenthood versus Casey, they came up with this undue burden standard. And any law that could create an undue burden on a woman’s access to abortion was considered unconstitutional. And that included a lot of clinic regulations. Very,

1:06:48 I think you said earlier, common sense regulations, like are the hallways wide enough for a gurney to go down? Or does the abortion doctor have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital in case something goes wrong? They can actually go and do emergency care for the patient.

1:07:05 those things have have not had those have been struck down even up to the supreme court under that standard because the um the abortion uh facility clinics um argued well if we have to do that that’s going to cost us so much money and it’s going to

1:07:22 shut us down and that’s going to make it impossible for women to have access to abortion and so It makes no sense. We always call it the abortion distortion. It’s like rules that apply everywhere else do not apply when it comes to abortion. And the things that they are getting away with are horrifying.

1:07:44 The New York Times just put out a piece what two weeks ago um on Planned Parenthood where they were talking about things like sewage leaking into the clinic and and women sitting there throwing up because

1:07:57 of the smell right and this was the New York Times right this wasn’t the Wall

1:08:01 Street Journal right exactly I mean the things they get away with but it’s um again, it just goes back to, are they actually caring for women? Because if they are, you’d think they would want to have better care, better standards of care. You know, they’d have, and we want good health care for women.

1:08:22 We want them to actually be cared for. They have fallen, they have

1:08:29 Yeah, I could go on about that as well. I do want to wrap us up. One of the upcoming guests we have is, I’m actually going to ask him about this, is the Reverend Dr. Jim Belcher, who wrote a book called… Oh, yeah. Deep Church, which I used to plant two churches.

1:08:53 But his most recent book, which came out in 2021, is called Cold Civil War. And in that, he’s talking about a thing that’s been happening quite a bit. I think Bill Bishop wrote a book called The Big Sort. where it talks about how America is kind of sorting itself out.

1:09:10 And that is feeding into this kind of polarization that’s happening in the country. And the issue that we’ve talked about, which is you’ve got pro-life states now, and… pro-choice states and people move to them based on their political ideology and what they agree with. And this is not a unifying thing that’s happening, right?

1:09:35 There are deep divides in our country and politics is not going to fix it. It does really kind of bring us back full circle. This is really the role of the church. right? That we don’t need the government to tell us what morality is. What we need is the church to do it, right?

1:09:55 And all the legislation in the world, all the arguing for things and appointing justices and appointing things, those things really don’t don’t matter in the long run if the country has just become unmoored from what is truth and what is real and what is a person and all of these things. These are all kind of existential things.

1:10:19 So what’s one or two things we can be praying for you for and for Susan B. Anthony, Pro-Life America for before we let you go?

1:10:27 Oh, thank you. Pray for wisdom. These are, I mean, as you know, these are complicated and personal issues and we want to handle it with such care and such wisdom. And also for courage, because a lot of people care about this issue, but it’s politically scary.

1:10:54 And so I think praying for pro-life people to do the right thing in the right way And being able to instill courage in the people who can make the laws and the policies that can protect the unborn and their moms.

1:11:15 Okay. Man, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate it. I appreciate the work that you do. And even more than appreciating the work that you do, I appreciate the way that you do it. I appreciate the care that you have. So thanks for coming on the podcast.

1:11:35 Thanks so much for having me.

1:11:36 Okay. Hey, that’s it for this episode of the Faithful Presence podcast. It was so good to have my friend Jamie Dangers on the podcast. You know, she’s offered a couple prayer requests. We encourage you to pray for her. And, you know,

1:11:51 one of the things that I say in the article that I wrote is that people who are considering abortion… the thing that they need is not to be yelled at or, um, demeaned on the day of their abortion, but to have relation, deep relationships with people who care about them well before that.

1:12:11 So just want to encourage you to kind of live that out in the way that you can with your neighbors, your next door neighbors, whoever it is, your friends, your coworkers, and just let them know that, um, that you care about them because that that really is one of the most important

1:12:27 factors in this whole thing uh so thank you to to jamie dangers from uh susan b anthony pro-life america we’re thankful to have her on the podcast today uh if you enjoyed the podcast you know like it do all the things that you’re supposed to do

1:12:41 to make all the social rhythm or social social media algorithms work well I want to thank Josie Reisinger, our chief of staff for her excellent work on kind of making all the planning things happen. I want to thank Andrew Brinkman for his work on cleaning up all of these podcasts

1:12:59 and making them seem like I know what I’m doing. And with that said, receive this benediction. May our father in heaven make you one as he and his son are one so that the world will know that he loves them and sent his son for them. Amen. Go in peace into the public square. Bye now.