The World and Everything in It: November 9, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I'm Steven Stone, a member of Highland Community Church in Highland, Illinois. We're preparing for one of our ministry projects. We provide free automotive oil changes twice a year for clients of our local food pantry. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Protection for unborn babies went down in Ohio on Tuesday. Why didn’t pro-life messages resonate with voters?

AUDIO: My mind hasn't changed seeing this, I still think that women deserve the right to choose however they see fit.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And cities face obstacles to clearing homeless encampments. Also, cleanup after Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico. And, honoring veterans in hospice.

AUDIO: I'd love for somebody in the military to come in and just say, ‘You did really good. I'm proud of you.’

Also WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says that yesterday’s election results mean pro-lifers need a new game plan.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, November 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: GOP debate » Republican White House hopefuls squared off last night in Miami in the third presidential debate of the year.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made his most pointed argument yet as to why the party should nominate him instead of Donald Trump. He noted multiple GOP losses in Tuesday elections 

DESANTIS: He said Republicans were going to get tired of winning. Well, we saw last night, I’m sick of Republicans losing.

And he highlighted big wins in Florida in last year’s midterm elections. He also criticized Trump over the billions of dollars added to the debt during his presidency.

Israel, of course, was a big topic. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said she spoke to the Israeli prime minister after the October 7th Hamas terror attacks.

HALEY: The first thing I said to him when it happened, was I said “Finish them. Finish them.” And the reason is, I worked on this every day when I was at the United Nations.

All candidates on the stage were united in the need to support Israel with the exception of businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. He suggested the United States should not involve itself in foreign conflicts.

Blinken post-Hamas Gaza » Meantime, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is calling for a Palestinian-led government for Gaza and the West Bank after the Israel-Hamas war ends. That proposal would be a possible step toward Palestinian statehood.

BLINKEN: What I’ve heard from Israeli leaders is that they have no intent to reoccupy Gaza and retake control of Gaza. So the only question is, is there some transition period that might be necessary.

The Israeli government says after toppling Hamas, Israel will be responsible for security in Gaza for an “indefinite period” of time.

Hearing campus speech » On Capitol Hill, lawmakers in a House hearing sounded alarms about growing antisemitism on college campuses amid the war.

Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler:

NADLER: The steady rise in antisemitism in this country over the past several years has reached a fever pitch. And few places have had to bear the weight of that trend more than our college and university campuses.

One student at the University of Iowa testified that in her view, conservative students face greater challenges in expressing their views on campus.

Mayorkas hearing » And across the Capitol rotunda in the Senate, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was in the hot-seat. Republican members of the Appropriations Committee grilled him on border security.

Senator Lindsay Graham noted that a record number of people on the terrorist watch list crossed the southern border in the last fiscal year.

GRAHAM: Are they out of the country?
MAYORKAS: …are screened…
GRAHAM: Are they out of the country or are they in the country?
MAYORKAS: Senator, they very well may be out of the country.
GRAHAM: But you don’t know! There are people on the terrorist watch list and you don’t know where they’re at!

Secretary Mayorkas appeared before the committee to try and sell members on the need to approve President Biden’s supplemental funding request. The $105-billion-dollar proposal would fund aid for Israel, Ukraine, border security and more, all at the same time.

Testimony on Ukraine aid » That was part of a full court press by the Biden administration at the Capitol.

State Department officials also pitched that plan to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs James O'Brien made the case that Washington must continue to back Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.

O'BRIEN: This is the wrong time to walk away. Because Ukraine is winning. It's already taken back half the territory Putin seized since February 22. It's opened up the Black Sea Grain Lanes that Putin tried to shut down in July.

But some Republican lawmakers are expressing growing concern about funding aid to Ukraine … with unsolved problems at home. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio pointed to border security concerns and the spiraling national debt.

RUBIO: Now obviously we've got to help Israel. We still have to build up our military, because the real risk is China. Why is Ukraine important in that context?

The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve 61 billion dollars of additional funding for Ukraine as part of its larger funding request.

The GOP-led House wants to debate aid for Israel and Ukraine separately.

Hunter, James subpoena » Democrats in the House are accusing Republican members of playing politics after the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed President Biden’s son and brother to testify amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry.

The top Democrat on the committee Jamie Raskin:

RASKIN: They decided to send out a whole bunch of subpoenas, thinking that that would distract everybody from the fact that after nine months, they didn't produce any evidence of a crime, much less an impeachable crime.

House Republicans say they’ve been gathering plenty of evidence that suggests the president had improper connections to his son Hunter’s business dealings.

Actors reportedly reach deal to end strike » They say the show must go on, and it appears it will in Hollywood after actors reportedly struck a deal with studios to end a four-month-long strike.

The actors’ union and studios have reached a tentative three-year deal. It’s believed the deal includes better pay and royalty payments and assurances about the future use of artificial intelligence.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: talking with voters about abortion in Ohio. Plus, the final salute.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, November 9th, 2023.

Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up on The World and Everything in It: Abortion in Ohio.

On Tuesday, Ohioans passed Issue 1 by a vote of 57 to 43 percent. The ballot measure adds a right to abortion to the state constitution. Pro-lifers are concerned it will also dismantle existing laws restricting abortion in the state.

BROWN: WORLD’s Leah Savas talked to Ohio voters on election day and has a report on how they responded to pro-life messaging.

SOUND: [Leah walking on sidewalk and into the exhibit]

LEAH SAVAS, REPORTER: It’s Tuesday afternoon. A young couple is walking up a trendy street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. They stop outside of a storefront by an A-frame sign on the sidewalk that says, “EVIDENCE, crime scene photos from the trial of America’s biggest serial killer.” Intrigued, the couple steps inside.

SOUND: [Couple entering] 

MAYA: Hi! We’re just wondering what this is.

Inside is a big empty room with fancy tile flooring. A few dozen photos of a Philadelphia abortion facility line the white walls in silver frames—photos of unsanitary metal surgical tools, and jars investigators found filled with the feet of aborted babies. At the back of the exhibit, black curtains conceal photos of dead babies at advanced gestational ages.

They’re all photos from the 2013 trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist who ran a filthy facility in downtown Philadelphia. He’s serving three life sentences for crimes including murdering babies born alive and performing illegal late-term abortions.

ANNALISA PESEK: We brought it here because of Issue 1. And which has been voted on today.

That’s Annalisa Pesek. She’s a part of the team staffing the exhibit and is the one welcoming the visitors. A flier informs visitors about the amendment on Ohio ballots that would add a right to abortion to the state constitution. It says if Issue 1 passes, it could protect abortionists like Gosnell from legal scrutiny. And that babies exactly like the ones shown in the exhibit will be routinely aborted in Ohio under Issue 1. Here’s Phelim McAleer, one of the exhibit designers.

PHELIM McALEER: A lot of what Gosnell was convicted for could be legal under Ohio's issue one, you know. And would Gosnell be serving a life sentence if he was in Ohio today?

Less than two hours after polls closed, early results indicated the amendment had passed. But some Ohio voters north of Columbus in the city of Delaware shared these concerns about enshrining abortion rights in interviews outside of polling locations on Tuesday.

SAVAS: How did you vote on Issue 1? That's the abortion amendment.

VOTER: I voted no.

SAVAS: And why?

VOTER: Because I don't like the idea of being able to do an abortion at any time during the pregnancy.

VOTER: I'm not totally against abortion in certain cases. But I thought this, this went way too far. I think a woman has a right to decide, but not to that point.

50-year-old Daniel Miller was concerned the amendment would allow partial-birth abortion.

DANIEL MILLER: That’s something I'm fairly staunchly against. Just because of the so much coverage on things like the nightmare of the Gosnell institution that came out a few years ago. We don't need that.

I met pro-lifer Joyce Thiel on the sidewalk outside of a Planned Parenthood in Columbus. She took issue with the way the amendment prioritized the so-called right to abortion.

JOYCE THIEL: The direct, intentional killing of an unborn human person who is completely innocent, completely defenseless, irreplaceable and unrepeatable is what abortion is. They're elevating to that right completely ignoring the rights of the human child, also, whose body is actually going to be dismembered.

But most of the Ohioans I talked to on Tuesday weren’t concerned about that child’s right to life. I met these voters at a polling location three minutes away from the abortion facility.

SAVAS: And how did you vote on issue one today?

VOTER: I voted yes.

SAVAS: And why?

VOTER: Um, because I feel like nobody has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body.

VOTER: Women should be in charge of their bodies.

VOTER: Because I think it should be a woman's right to choose.

VOTER: I think it's important to give reproductive rights to women.

Back at the Gosnell exhibition, Annalisa Pesek says some visitors have walked in with this mindset.

ANNALISA PESEK: People come in who have very strong opinions about issue one and are not going to listen. And they have left immediately once they heard the word abortion.

She says others stayed and looked. The photos of the dead babies brought some to tears.

The young couple who walked in on the afternoon of election day went through the entire exhibit. Maya and Godwin seemed open to the message.

MAYA: This was a lot actually. Yeah, very, very sad to to watch.

GODWIN: I feel like this should really be an eye opener for people. Well, what could go wrong? What could happen?

They said the photos of the dead babies were hard to look at. But they still defended abortion.

GODWIN: it looks like he just didn't do it the right way. It just It looks like he just maybe killed some of them.

MAYA: I think that a lot of women have different circumstances. And it's all just not black and white. And I think that they should have the decision to do whatever makes them feel most comfortable to move on and to become stronger again.

They hadn’t voted on Issue 1 yet, but already knew how they would vote.

MAYA: My mind hasn't changed seeing this, I still think that women deserve the right to choose however they see fit. This was just very eye-opening.

Pesek recognizes that one look at photos like these may not change long-held views on abortion, but she says it may just be the first step towards a new perspective.

PESEK: You can’t really walk through this exhibit without having second thoughts about what you maybe thought if you were on the pro-abortion side.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas in Columbus and Delaware, Ohio.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Homelessness and how to deal with it.

Homeless numbers in American cities continue to rise. Residents and business owners are asking city officials to clear out the camps.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Federal case law requires some cities to provide a certain number of beds in shelters before enforcing criminal penalties for public camping. But some cities are pushing back.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Compassion reporter, Addie Offereins, visited a homeless encampment in Austin, Texas, and reported on the legal battles for WORLD Digital.

Reporting producer Lillian Hamman brings us the story.

AUDIO: Hi guys! We're here from Sunrise. We have food and water and bus passes.

LILLIAN HAMMAN, REPORTER: Four staff members from Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, park in the grass along a busy highway at a homeless encampment in Austin, Texas. Settled on Banister road, staffers call the encampment Banister camp.

SOUND: [Dogs bark, Carmen speaking to a man] 

About 30 people are camping in tents and shanties clustered in the woods behind a chain link fence. Smoke hangs in the air from burning car tires helping combat the dropping temperatures. The campers are stable for now, but that could change at any moment. It’s technically illegal to camp outside in Austin.

One woman at Banister camp has been homeless for about two years.

WOMAN: Just kind of all around right here I was on Congress Bridge before the city comes in and they take our stuff. They say this because it's the cleanliness. So we're kind of going round and round with the city.

Kelley Jura-Myrick is Sunrise’s mobile and shelter services program manager.

JURA-MYRICK: They keep sweeping camps and throwing away their things, throwing away their tents. They have to start all over. Throwing away critical documents: birth certificates and anything within their tent gets thrown away if they're not at their camp.

Cities like Austin are struggling to keep their streets clean and safe, while navigating the legal challenges that come with moving people out of public camps. In 2019, Austin ended a 23-year-old ban on public camping in the city. But two years later, they reversed course.

NEWS: Austin police officers can start clearing out campsites and making arrests as phase three of the homeless camping ban takes effect. And this happens as many in the homeless community still don't know where to go if they're moved.

Voters reinstated the public camping ban in 2021 after homelessness increased 11 percent in 2020. But the ordinance has not solved underlying problems like a lack of shelter space and treatment plans for individuals struggling with addiction.

So police often shuffle people from place to place. But some Austin residents say this isn’t enough. Former probation officer Cleo Petricek [Peh-tree-sick] leads the political action committee, Save Austin Now. She says the harms of leaving encampments alone outweigh any problems that come with intervening.

PETRICEK: We need to have accountability. Having them in underpasses or hidden in the woods where women are raped daily, where there's open drug use, you know, fentanyl deaths that happen on a common basis. That is not the humane way to go and that should never have been the plan for any city in the country.

She says it’s also not the lawful way to go.

PETRICEK: We are suing the city for non compliance of following through with not only the city law, but the state law. We have several business owners that have that that were a part of our lawsuit that that have shown damage because of the lack of enforcement.

And it’s not just in Texas. Cities like Phoenix and San Francisco are locked in their own legal battles related to two rulings regarding public camping. One from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and another from the Supreme Court.

Timothy Sandefur, vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, explains the two rulings.

TIMOTHY SANDEFUR: It begins with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which, of course, governs the western states, which in a case some years ago, called Martin versus Boise said that it violates the eighth amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause for police officers to arrest somebody for sleeping on the streets or sleeping on the sidewalks or living in a tent, under the anti camping ordinances, if that person can't find shelter elsewhere.

The Supreme Court case is called Johnson v. City of Grants Pass. In 2022, it narrowed the appeal’s court precedent.

SANDEFUR: Not only can you not punish somebody for involuntarily sleeping on the streets, but we're going to define involuntary to mean, if there are not enough shelter beds available in a city-run shelter, to accommodate the homeless population, then people sleeping on the streets are per se sleeping there involuntarily. So it's a pure numerical formula.

A bipartisan coalition that includes Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Republican lawmakers in Arizona say the ruling leaves a lot of unanswered questions that invite lawsuits from homeless shelters. So in September, they asked the Supreme Court to reconsider Johnson v. Grants Pass to give clarity on things like what qualifies as adequate shelter and what happens when someone refuses to accept shelter?

SANDEFUR: For the cop on the beat, that is confusing. The city has basically told us don't, you know, don't arrest people. Meanwhile, they're breaking the law, and it's causing a lot of confusion for the good faith city officials.

The Supreme Court requested a response from the opposition by December 6. Sandefur believes the court’s request means it’s likely to hear the case.

But even if the justices make it easier for cities to move people off the streets. Local ministries and public officials still wrestle with the root causes of the crisis.

SANDEFUR: For those people who honestly just need a brief hand up, then get them the services they need. And then for the people who are actually dangerous criminals, incarcerate those. There's as many answers to that, as probably as there are homeless people.

For WORLD, I’m Lillian Hamman.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And now: hurricane recovery.

Two weeks ago, on October 25, Hurricane Otis slammed into the southwest coast of Mexico. Otis went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just a matter of hours. That made preparations and evacuations very difficult.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: One city hit particularly hard was the popular beach resort of Acapulco. Here now is WORLD Latin America correspondent Javier Bolaños with a report.

JAVIER BOLANOS, CORRESPONDENT: In the early hours of October 25th, residents of the world-famous beach resort of Acapulco, Mexico, were awakened by the terrifying roar of Hurricane Otis. The Category 5 storm, swept through with winds reaching 165 miles per hour and left a trail of devastation in its wake. Hotels and homes were flattened. Streets flooded and power lines were knocked down. The heavy flooding triggered landslides and left parts of the State of Guerrero without power or cell phone service. The number of dead and missing after the hurricane passed rose to nearly one hundred.

ALFONSO HERNANDEZ: We thought it was the end because this had never happened before. We were terrified.

Alfonso Hernandez is a local resident. He and his family of four hid together with their two dogs and a chicken in a small closet to weather the storm. Otis blew the roof off the rest of the house.

HERNANDEZ: Our whole house was shaking. We thought our day had come. But thank God we are alive.

When dawn broke, Alfonso's home was severely damaged, but his spirit remained unbroken.

HERNANDEZ: The Lord saved us; I have no doubt about that. We will get out of this situation. 

In the aftermath of Otis, neighbors helped neighbors pick up the pieces. It’s also been an opportunity for Christians to help their neighbors.

Christian humanitarian organizations played a crucial role in providing aid and comfort to the survivors. Operation Blessing's disaster relief team, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, was deployed to hard-hit communities to identify the most significant needs.

DIEGO TRAVERSO: Acapulco was ninety percent devastated; people lost everything. No food, nowhere to cook, nowhere to sleep. Basic needs. Water, food, shelter, and medicine.

Diego Traverso, Operation Blessing disaster relief international director, explains the work they have done to help in all these areas. The organization's staff members have worked side by side with members of local churches.

TRAVERSO: We set up water purification plants, distributed water, and hot meals. We started medical brigades. Then, the next stage is to bring stoves for the families. We give them a stove so they can cook their food, along with boxes of goods and supplies.

Otis was unlike any hurricane that has previously hit Mexico. According to experts, Otis was notable for its fast strengthening force, and trajectory. The phenomenon went from a tropical storm to a category five hurricane, the highest on the scale, in just a few hours. Its winds made it the most powerful cyclone to land in the Mexican Pacific since records began, even more than the intense Hurricane Patricia in October 2015.

Scott Hill is an experienced disaster relief expert with more than twenty years of work in Mexico and Latin America. He says he has not seen anything so destructive during his professional career.

SCOTT HILL: I would say it is one of the most destructive disasters here in Mexico. There is not a single house in Acapulco or the nearby areas that has not been affected by Hurricane Otis, which has caused an extreme amount of havoc.

With so much storm damage, getting enough clean drinking water for everyone is a greater challenge. Food and medical supplies are in short supply, especially those that need to be refrigerated, like insulin.

From Puebla, a state located in the central-eastern part of the country, Pastor Oscar Moedano organized members of his Breath of Life Church community to bring essential supplies to the coast. The pastor drove for almost five hours in a pickup truck lent by a brother from the church. The car was full of supplies.

OSCAR MOEDANO: All this help was collected from church members, relatives, and friends. We do not receive support from any organization from another country.

Acapulco will need this kind of help for a while. Because while clean up and rebuilding has begun in this city of over a million people, full recovery will take a long time.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Javier Bolaños.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Myrna, ya like cheese?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: MB: I do, but...

REICHARD: Especially melty cheese, and there’s a particular kind called Raclette. It dates back hundreds of years when herdsman in the Alps heated it up in an open fire, then scraped off the melty part to eat.

Switzerland held the World Championship for Raclette cheese last month. One judge described what he was looking for:

JUDGE: [Speaking in French] We are looking for a raclette that is creamy, smooth, has a beautiful appearance, a beautiful color, not too pale. A good orange color like that.

Creamy and smooth, no strings, beautiful color. This was serious business: in a quiet room with judges twirling cheese around on a fork before tasting.

BROWN: The top winners?

REICHARD: All Swiss citizens!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 9th. This is WORLD Radio, and we’re glad you joined us today. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: honoring veterans in their final days.

According to the Veterans Administration, more than a half million veterans die each year. Some die without friends or family nearby. One veteran in San Antonio has made it his calling to make sure no veteran dies alone.

Here’s WORLD reporter Todd Vician.

SOUND: [Keys, shutting car door]

TODD VICIAN, REPORTER: Hal Smarkola is a 75-year-old veteran of three wars. When he gets in his car, he goes through a routine.

SMARKOLA: Keys, wallet, phone.

It’s almost like a pre-flight checklist he went through in Vietnam. His mission these days? Spend time with fellow veterans who are dying.

Smarkola began visiting veterans in hospice care in 2017. That was shortly before Peggy, his wife of 47 years, died following a lengthy battle with cancer.

SMARKOLA: When Peggy died, I just wanted to die the day after her.

Instead of focusing on his loss, Smarkola found new purpose…talking at a time and place when most Americans don’t know what to say. He helps families deal with a coming loss by telling stories, saying thank you, and listening.

Mary Thorsby has run Abode Contemplative Care for the Dying since 2019. She comes alongside Smarkola when he’s visiting veterans and families in one of the home’s three bedrooms. She’s seen families deal with dying well and others ignore the obvious.

THORSBY: There's, you know, family members who are in denial, and they don't want mom to know that she's dying. And they'll tell hospice, you know, “She doesn't know that she's dying. So don't tell her.” But then hospice will get alone with mom and mom will say, “listen, the family doesn’t know I’m dying, so don't tell them, they won't be able to handle it.” 

Thorsby and her team try and bridge that divide.

THORSBY: And so we tried very hard to meet people where they are, and do our best to help them understand that this is happening, and it’s so important to spend your last stretch of time with those you love.

Veterans aren’t the only guests at Abode. But the San Antonio metro area is home to more than 156,000 veterans. So, many of the guests at Abode have served their country in uniform at least some time in their lives.

Edwin Sasek is Abode’s founder.

SASEK: We always knew there was a need for veterans, as there is a need for anybody who's dying, to have a place to stay at the end of life. We didn't focus on veterans as a subgroup or as a group, but they're a part of the community in a big way. So in the years that we've been open, in many ways, we've been reaching out to veterans organizations to let them know that we're here.

Studies show most people prefer to die at home, but families often find it difficult to care for a loved one in their final days. But being cared for isn’t the same as feeling appreciated, something Smarkola and the staff and volunteers at Abode strive to offer.

Beverly Toomala is a hospice nurse, veteran, and president of Abode’s board of directors. She sees a pattern among the people she serves. Nearly all question their self worth. Death and dying provides an opportunity for someone to help answer those questions.

TUOMALA: What I see the most is they’re very proud of their service and that you recognize that. It may not have been a big part of their life, but the fact that at the end we recognize that. A lot of end of life is reflection, and you know “What did I do with my life? What good did I do?” When we bring it up, they're like, “Wow, yeah, I did something.” 

Smarkola often helps make connections between veterans and their loved ones who don’t understand what it was like in uniform. He’s gotten World War II veterans to share stories they had long forgotten and that families had never heard. He’s spurred a reunion between a dying veteran with a duffle bag full of regrets and a daughter the veteran hadn’t seen in five years simply by telling him, “I love you.”

Abode’s director, Thorsby, gets teary eyed when reflecting on the reunion that nobody thought would happen before the veteran died.

THORSBY: This is kind of the magical thing that happens here all the time. I like to say we change people’s lives even at the end of their lives.

Smarkola recently visited 90-year-old Freddy Tidwell, also an Air Force veteran. Tidwell was lying in bed covered by a Dallas Cowboys blanket and surrounded by his family. Smarkola introduced himself, made small talk, and then moved close to Tidwell’s head. Then he said what he’s told many veterans in their final days - or even last few minutes.

SMARKOLA: I just want to say thank you, for your military service. You've got an amazing family, but they have to realize that you're going on an amazing journey. As you begin it, you’re free to go. You're dismissed from the Air Force, you're free to go.

Smarkola also presents a small American flag to every veteran he visits. A flag just like the one his dad wore on his uniform when he was almost killed in World War II. And the flag Smarkola flies outside his home’s front door now.

SMARKOLA: This is the flag you raised your right hand…

He doesn’t perform this mission for praise, but Smarkola never loses sight of its importance.

SMARKOLA: I would love when I die or are starting to go, I'd love for somebody in the military to come in and just say, “You did really good. I'm proud of you.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in San Antonio, Texas.

REICHARD: To read more about one man’s mission honoring our dying veterans, look for Todd’s story in the November 4th issue of WORLD Magazine.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, November 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on what Republicans should take away from Tuesday’s elections.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Elections in Virginia and Ohio should convince pro-life Republicans of their need to come up with a different strategy when it comes to abortion. An approach of no-exceptions or strictly limiting the procedure isn’t working, in part because a new generation of younger people seem less predisposed to curtailing it.

When it comes to pregnancies due to rape or incest, Republicans and pro-lifers need to go on offense and counter the “pro-choice” crowd’s fixation on those rare instances. USA Today has reported that according to the Guttmacher Institute “Just one percent of women obtain an abortion because they became pregnant through rape, and less than 0.5% do so because of incest.”

Those who are pro-life need to do a better job of portraying the other side as the real radicals. They mostly oppose any restrictions until live birth and the ultra-radicals, like former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is OK with a woman changing her mind after the baby is born and setting it aside to die. Pro-lifers should focus on such anti-life positions and try to negotiate a middle ground while continuing to work to protect the unborn at earlier stages. Aren’t more than 60 million abortions enough? Are people not concerned about the decline in America’s birth rate?

Back to politics. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin was seen by some as a possible alternative to Donald Trump in the presidential contest. He campaigned hard to hold on to the slim Republican majority in the state house and flip the Democrat’s slim majority in the state senate. Instead, he and Republicans lost both houses, dooming most of his agenda for his last two years in office including his proposal to limit abortions to 15 weeks.

Redistricting in Virginia did not help Youngkin’s cause. On top of the usual large turnout by Democrats in Northern Virginia, Richmond and other high population cities, the redrawing of district lines favored Democrats. It’s fair to say that after yesterday’s results, any hope of a Youngkin presidential candidacy next year is dead, if it ever was alive.

Some Republicans are calling for RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to resign because of continuing losses, but she is not the main problem. Too many Republicans are reluctant to talk about abortion because they appear unsure or uncomfortable with their positions.

We live in an anti-life and increasingly lawless culture. When I was young, newspapers buried most crime stories on inside pages because there was so little of it. Today, even multiple murders in cities like Chicago and New York barely get our attention unless they can be turned into a racial issue. I see abortion increasingly as a reflection of our deepening decadence at many levels. It’s not the main cause of our moral decline. That means it must be dealt with at a deeper level than politics.

As expected, Democrats are celebrating their victories. It appears they will make abortion a central issue in the 2024 presidential campaign in hopes of distracting voter attention from President Biden’s terrible record. Republicans had better find a way to answer them.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. And, another installment of superhero girl power with The Marvels. We’ll have a review. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires. 

The Bible says: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” —1 Corinthians, chapter 16, verse 13.

Go now in grace and peace.

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