Culture Friday: U.S. abortion numbers hit a record high

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 22nd of March, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Culture Friday. And joining us is John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John. I'd like to begin with news this week from the Guttmacher Institute, I'm sure you saw it. And for the listener who may be unfamiliar with the group it began, Guttmacher did, began as a research arm of Planned Parenthood and now it's its own thing, still very much pro-abortion, but I've not really heard the quality of its research knocked. So, according to Guttmacher this week, the number of abortions in the U.S. hit the highest level in a decade despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago, and pro-life protections emerging in more than a dozen states. It says the overall number of abortions in the US annually rose beyond the 1 million mark. One other part of the research, Guttmacher said that nearly one in five pregnant women are now traveling out of pro-life states to have abortions, and that medication abortions are also becoming more common. More than 6 in 10 of the abortions in the U.S. last year were carried out with abortion drugs. So, John, do you quibble with the numbers? Do they surprise you? What's your thought?

STONESTREET: I don't quibble with the numbers. I mean, I think they could be mistaken here and there. I think they could be less reflective of a reality in which the numbers are really increasing. For example, you know, we've had issues in the past of all states reporting the number of abortions. You know, for example, in California it's not being required. And I don't think we had really gotten a handle on chemical abortions until it became such a central part of Planned Parenthood's financial model, which it is now. I don't doubt at all that the chemical abortion is now the new face of protecting innocent preborn life, confronting that. Because when moral decisions are privatized, when people are made not accountable or responsible to anyone outside of themselves, we will make immoral decisions. This is the state of the human condition. This is what it means to live in the wake of the fall. Hidden evil, evil in which we are allowed to hide when no one's looking, is evil that flourishes. And that is really the story of the sexual revolution. I think a lot of pro-life leaders maybe thought in the wake of Roe, and in the wake of, you know, some really important and good decisions made in the states, certain states and a pro-life decision, that America was more pro-life than it was. But at the heart, we're relativists. We're a, you know, sexually-broken, relativistic, internally-motivated and -turned culture. And that does not reckon well for the innocent among us.

EICHER: Do you think that the President and Vice President are on to something when they use an abortion clinic as a backdrop? I mean, exactly what you're saying here, John, that they would use an abortion clinic as a backdrop for a campaign event? I mean, maybe they know something we don't?

STONESTREET: Well, look, I don't know that it's as outrageous, given the actions of the Democratic Party and the Democratic convention over the last several years, the way that Democratic politicians have turned pro-lifers not into people they disagree with, but people that are evil, and that are actually doing harm to others. You can't be a politician in that party and be pro-life. I think the last one's gone, isn't it? Is there any left? I don't think there's any left. I think Manchin was the last one, right?

EICHER: I think so. I mean, there are groups, but you're talking about major candidates. And yeah, the answer is no.

STONESTREET: Yeah, they're irrelevant groups. They're groups that have absolutely no influence, you know. It's like the Washington football Commanders fan club, they have no impact on the fact that the team never wins, I mean, you know, they're irrelevant to where the direction of the program, you know, has nothing to do with that. And I think that basically, the Democratic Party has become more and more comfortable with saying the quiet part out loud. And for Kamala Harris to appear the way she did in front of this clinic is consistent with the actions. It's not all that outrageous. And this is why it's so confusing to some of us when some Christians want to make these parties morally equivalent. It doesn't fit the evidence.

BROWN: Okay. Well, let's talk about happiness, John. Ready? California has created something called the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes. It's a study group—stop giggling—it's a study group charged with figuring out what makes people happy. And as a state lobbyist said, “Government's role is to provide for its people. The goal of all public policy is to have happy citizens.” Now, is that really what the government is for, or does California have a god complex?

STONESTREET: Well, California has a god complex, and that was true before this story. You know, it's not the government's job. In fact the government actually can't do it. What the government really should do, though, because we do have a happiness deficit, and it's reached epidemic levels. When you talk about mental health crises and loneliness and despair and so on. And I, I do think, you know, when, for example, the World Health Organization—by the way, this is kind of the same story, a cultural story, of the World Health Organization declaring loneliness as a public health crisis, because it is. But you know, what's interesting is that the timing of this is a little bit funny. Just because we have had some really remarkable research reported on from the National Marriage Institute at the University of Virginia, Brad Wilcox's work, his book is out this week, and, you know, once again, all the research says that the happiest people in the world are married people. In fact, the happiest, happiest people in the world are religious, married people. And that's on a number of metrics: financial security, sexual satisfaction, you know, meaning, and all that sort of stuff. So if California really did want to address happiness, then what they would do is stop, you know, redefining and changing and getting in the way of and incentivizing against marriage, and they would figure out how to do pro-marriage policies. Because that is the only thing consistently that we know of, over the last 40, 50, 60 years that the research has been done. You know, opioids don't do it, sexual freedom doesn't do it, increased access to pornography doesn't do it, growing wealth doesn't do it once you're past a particular pretty low threshold. The only thing that grows happiness, apparently, is marriage. So, and family, so you know, I'm not saying single people can't be happy. Don't send me those emails. Of course, they can. Not everyone's called to this. But I'm just talking about this is what the data says. And so, that's what California would do if they really cared about it.

EICHER: You know, John, the purpose of government is not to make people happy, it's to stamp out misinformation, which leads me right to the Supreme Court. This week a couple of cases on government leaning on media, government leaning on business, and whether that is in or out of bounds with respect to our constitutional rights. Of course, the media one I'm personally most interested in. It's a case from my state of Missouri dealing with government interactions with social media platforms. We're gonna get into this pretty deeply on Monday in Legal Docket, so we're not going for the constitutional finer points. But from a layman's perspective, John, the government has awesome powers, frightening powers, and when it uses them in the name of fighting so-called misinformation, do you worry a bit about that? Or is the trade-off perhaps worth it to put some kind of official check on really, I mean, patently false information? What's your view on this?

STONESTREET: Well, it's just a ridiculous commentary right now, given we are just coming out of a 3-4 year period in which the government was the fundamental source of false information, at least according to the pandemic, and according to school lock downs, and so on. So if you again, I always say if you're not on X or Twitter, don't start, but if you are, check out Drew Holden's account this week, where he actually just went through and documented the headlines that were informed by the CDC and by left-leaning political leaders, basically saying anyone who does anything against the narrative about COVID actually wants to kill grandma. And you know, look, it was media misinformation, but it was misinformation from mainstream media outlets, and it was information that was coming from government sources. I mean, we've had the people themselves, now, admit, you know, well, we didn't know but we talked as if we did. You know, we have the the head of the teachers union, you know, saying “Oh, kids are resilient, they'll be able to bounce back learning-wise, you know, from these you know, lockdowns.” They have people saying people who want to open up schools, again, are actually racists that want to kill, you know, minority kids, when they're the ones that were most negatively and adversely affected by the lockdowns to begin with. Those aren't recoverable among vulnerable populations. They're just, you know, that learning is lost for that generation. And that learning in that generation is lost forever. When you just do the math and of course we have Francis Collins. How can you be like among the smartest scientists on the planet, and not distinguish between the Bronx and Billings, Montana?

EICHER: And going around to churches to spread that.

STONESTREET: And then, that's right, leaning on churches to do this. Look, this source of misinformation was the state. So, you know, what is it when the state then turns around and says, "I want to police the misinformation," especially when the same state officials sometimes are talking about how the freedom of speech is actually something that gets in the way … gets in the way of what? Of you controlling the false information, or you controlling information in general? Look, the trust level is low. So for them to jump into the game at this point, and try to, you know, be the arbiters of truth? Well look, they're not gonna, they're not gonna get a buy in from me, I don't think they're gonna get a buy in from a lot of Americans.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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