Right To Life Radio | Life Report

Josh, Gabi and Megan Almon from Life Training Institute discuss how pro-lifers can best respond to pro-choice people who argue that abortion should be legal because the world is overpopulated or because women will die in back-alleys if abortion became illegal. Note: Our strategy for responding to back-alley abortions relies heavily on the work of Steve Wagner from Justice For All.

The second part of Josh's interview with Brad Mattes, CEO of Life Issues Institute and host of the Emmy award-winning television show, "Facing Life Head-On." Brad answers the questions from the "Life Report Questionnaire" and more! Questions: What did you get in trouble for as a child? What is your favorite movie, and why? What has been the pro-life movement's greatest victory (or victories) so far? What has been the pro-life movement's greatest failing or weakness?  Does the pro-life movement need more unity, and if so, how can we accomplish that?  Graphic Pictures: Should we use them, and if so, how, when, and where?  What would you say to those who would argue that graphic pictures should be used in very public places because children don't seem to be too negatively effected by them?  Stem Cell Research & Human Cloning: What should pro-lifers be doing about this, and why?  What would you say to those who say it's unfair to compare the current successes of ESCR with adult stem cell research since ASCR

Josh interviews Brad Mattes, CEO of Life Issues Institute and host of the Emmy award-winning television show, "Facing Life Head-On."  Check back in two weeks for the second part of this interview, where Brad answers the questions from the "Life Report Questionnaire" and more! Questions: 1:11 - How did you get involved in the pro-life movement? 2:15 - How early was Dr. Wilke publishing pro-life literature and media? 2:54 - How do you think the pro-life movement has changed in the last 40 years, especially as it relates to media? 5:04 - What have you learned about how abortion affects men? 6:45 - What resources are available at http://LifeIssues.org? 7:32 - Tell us about your TV show, "Facing Life Head-On." 9:01 - What are some of the common themes on your show? 9:37 - How do you get Emmy nominations doing pro-life work? 10:38 - What were you hoping to accomplish by going to Ethiopia? 11:57 - What happened with the Ethiopian abortion worker you spoke to? 13:20 - Can you tell our audience about the woman you met

I got a wonderful email from Andres in Santa Barbara who was in a dialogue about abortion and used an analogy about being hooked up to a machine in order to demonstrate that your personhood isn't based on your dependance. But the person he was talking to retorted, "Are you comparing a woman to a machine?!" Andres wants to know what I would suggest we do to avoid throwing people off when the analogies we use seem, at a surface level, to demean pregnant women. In the video, I offer six tips for making clear analogies and responding to people who continue to misinterpret them. 1: Make sure you're communicating clearly. 2: Narrate the debate. 3: Suggest a golden rule for dialogue. 4: Explain that analogies are just that...analogies! 5: Explain that pro-choice people would be wise to not throw out all analogies. 6: Determine the right time to politely end the conversation. Find more resources about bodily rights argument for abortion at: http://prolifepodcast.net/tag/bodily-rights

Casey Vroman from Students for Life of America joins us in studio to talk about the free resources that SFLA offers to college students and now high schoolers. We believe it's important that all pro-life advocates know about these resources so that you can point students in your sphere of influence to them. Questions: 1:55 How did you get involved with Students for Life and the pro-life movement? 3:15 How would you explain what Students for Life does to somebody who hasn't heard of SFLA before? 4:22 What is SFLA's long-term goal with campus clubs? 5:35 What is SFLA doing with high school students now? 6:46 What has it been like working with high school students? 8:18 Is SFLA planning on working with junior high students in the future, and what would you say to concerned parents about that? 10:29 What are some of the initiatives you're doing on college campuses now? 13:23 What practical resources is SFLA offering to college students? 16:14 What are some common mistakes students can avoid when starting a campus

Here's an outline of my main points in response to this question from Bobby: "Some pro-life people oppose 'incrementalist' pro-life laws because they always end with '... and then you can kill the baby.' What are your thoughts? Note: Many of my arguments and thinking on these issues comes from conversations I had with Scott Klusendorf and Dr. Francis Beckwith, who both graciously spent time with me while I was working through these issues in 2007. I'm not sure now who said what and how many of these arguments are really my own, nor would I want to source any of these arguments directly to Scott or Frank without their permission. (These were all private conversations.) It's probably a fair assumption that the really smart talking points came from one of them though. This was supposed to be a video but we had technical difficulties with the recorded video, so I'm posting the audio only. Common ground: I agree that we don't want to communicate to people that we only care about babies that feel pain, are a certai

After summarizing Abby Johnson's story, Josh asks 40 Days for Life co-founder Shawn Carney about his ministry as well as the state of the pro-life movement. Questions: How do you think 40 Days for Life has changed the pro-life movement? Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when starting 40 Days for Life? Do people often go from participating in 40 Days for Life to doing other pro-life activities? What are you doing to encourage that? What do you think are the best methods for a local 40 Days for Life campaign? What could RLCC do better to persuade people to participate in sidewalk counseling? What has been the pro-life movements greatest victory so far? What has been the pro-life movements greatest weakness? What single thing should pro-lifers be doing that most are not doing right now? How should pro-life people interact with those that are pro-abortion-choice?

Josh, Tim and Gabi discuss what it actually means to be open-minded, (it does NOT mean being wishy-washy,) and whether pro-life people should be open-minded too.

After wrapping up four Life Report episodes, Josh, Tim and Gabi hung out to cover some material they didn't have time to get into earlier in the day. Those topics and questions for Tim include: You said, "Love does not insist on its own way; it does not need to have the last word in a debate." Does that conflict with the Stand to Reason mantra of trying to leave people with a pebble in their shoe? A discussion of pro-life memes and why most of them are bad. You said, "Love is not resentful, it does not dwell on the failures of those around us. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. It is not excited when those around us are caught in sin." What about pro-life groups like Live Action that do undercover investigative videos catching Planned Parenthood doing bad things? Can you talk about how we are to love practically with those in the pro-life movement who may disagree on our political method, for example on our use of graphic images? How would you apply your piece to that? Which line in the 1 Cor 13 piece do y

Megan Almon from Life Training Institute joins Josh and Gabi to discuss how pro-lifers can have productive conversations about Gosnell, as well as the common mistakes pro-lifers should avoid. One of the most common questions we get is "how do you start non-weird conversations about abortion when you're not on campus next to a pro-life exhibit?" One of the easier methods is to use a story that's currently in the news. Josh thinks pro-life people can have good conversations about abortion starting with the controversy of what Gosnell did, but he doesn't think you should stop there. He uses several specific questions to lead the conversation into talking about the abortions that are less controversial to pro-choice people: abortions done on first-trimester babies that are in the womb, aren't viable, aren't conscious and don't feel pain. After giving these questions and dialogue tips, the discussion turns to what pro-life people should NOT do when talking about Gosnell. What are the most common mistakes pro-lifer

Last February we published two episodes with our favorite (nearly graduated) student from Notre Dame Law John Gerardi with an update on the HHS mandate lawsuits as well as answering the controversial question, "why did so many church-going Catholics vote for President Obama, again?!"  After we recorded those two episodes, we spent another 20 minutes answering questions we hadn't talked about yet, and answered a good questions sent from a listener. This is the audio from that post-episode discussion. Topics/Questions: "Tell me about states like Massachusetts, that are heavily Catholic and Irish but are totally in the tank for Obama." "What do you think is the future for the bishops' involvement in politics?" Karen: "Is it even possible that we really change our society legislatively, or do we need to concentrate on the hearts of women and men?" Note from Josh: We try to get bonus audio published a lot closer to the original recording, but it wasn't as high of a priority as keeping our publishing schedule for

Josh, Tim and Gabi respond to fair questions that pro-choice people ask that we think pro-life people should be willing to answer. In this episode, we discuss how a lot of pro-choice people believe that pro-lifers want to punish women for having premarital sex by forcing them to remain pregnant. This seems clear because we're not distributing condoms or encouraging the use of birth control, which could arguably lower the rate of unintended pregnancies and abortions. How should pro-lifers respond to this concern? We also discuss the common conception (no pun intended) that pro-life activists are doing what they do because they're Christians. If so, is this just a ploy to force religion on people or win converts? We end the episode by discussing a recent story of a teen who sued her parents who were trying to coerce her into having an abortion. We offer some tips for pro-life people to use this story in dialogues with their pro-choice friends.

Josh, Tim and Gabi spend the next two episodes responding to fair questions that pro-choice people ask that we think pro-life people should be willing to answer. For example, when pro-lifers "trot out a toddler," does that mean we think women that have abortions are just as evil as mothers who kill their toddler? They also discuss how pro-choice people are often confused when they see a picture of a six-day old embryo at implantation, and then see us point at that picture and call it a "person."

It’s the twelfth and final part of our popular “Responding to Pro-Life Lies Video” series! The video we're responding to lists 55 “pro-life lies” a woman named Kenna heard, and in this series we respond to them all. This is the first of four episodes with Josh's brother Timothy, who is now a staff member at Justice For All. After discussing the last six "lies," Josh, Tim and Gabi have a conversation about the need for pro-life people to get out of their "echo chamber," and the need to ultimately be known by their love. We also communicate a mutual desire for both sides to be more charitable, considering the best arguments from the opposing side as opposed to just trumpeting the worst they can find. Here are the 8 “pro-life lies” we respond to in this episode: "Birth control causes abortion." "Emergency contraception is an abortifacient." "Women are sacred vessels." "Pro-choice women don't have children." "Pro-choice women should have their children taken away." "Pro-choice people don't care about babies." N

Stephanie Grant, Executive Director of Infant of Prague Adoption Services and Laurel Boylan, Founder of God's Waiting Children join Josh to discuss adoption. Topics include: Clarifying common misconceptions about adoption. The difference between open and closed adoption. The differences between the process of domestic and international adoption. Available grants for adopting parents. Addressing the common resentment between families that have adopted domestically and those that have adopted internationally. An update on the situation with Russian president Vladimir Putin banning American families from adopting children from Russia. How adopting children from the foster care system works. Does a pregnant teen need to choose adoption before contacting an adoption agency?

This is the recording of a sermon Josh preached on January 20, 2013 at Free Grace Church in Clovis. Josh addresses two common reasons why Christians don't take a stand to make a difference on the issue of abortion: the concern of offending people, and the argument that pro-life advocates should be focused solely on Christian evangelism. Josh argues pragmatically that pro-life work has actually given him more opportunities for evangelism and than makes a principled argument that Christians should be doing both evangelism AND speaking up for the unborn. Josh closes with some easy things that Christians can do to dip their toe in the waters of pro-life advocacy, and then takes a few questions that were texted in anonymously from the congregation. Q&A Session: "I have a friend that believe that abortion is actually evil, but he doesn't care. He blatantly admits that he is selfish and apathetic but he chooses not to do anything about that. How do you think I could help him to care and deal with his apathy?" "

Pro-choice people often accuse pro-life Christians of being hypocrites, charging that we don't really believe what we say we believe, evidenced by the fact that some Christians have abortions, among other things.  Hypocrisy is a rhetorically powerful charge, effectively silencing many Christians from saying anything about the issue of abortion. It's our view that some pro-choice accusations of pro-life hypocrisy are unfair, but that some of their charges are fair. In this episode, we discuss both categories.

We’re super excited about this episode, because we think it’s the best roundtable discussion we’ve recorded in a long time. Megan Almon from Life Training Institute joins us to discuss the recent Planned Parenthood ad that distances itself from the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” While pro-life bloggers discussed the ad when it came out, I felt like we had some unique perspectives to contribute. Discussion topics include the main problems with the argument in the ad, the weaknesses of labels in general, the importance of not stereotyping people and the question of whether moral neutrality is possible on abortion. Josh closes the show with questions for both sides of the abortion debate to consider.

Our favorite (nearly graduated) student from Notre Dame Law John Gerardi is back to help the pro-life community understand why so many faithful Catholics that go to mass every week still voted for President Obama in the 2012 election. Gerardi explains the history of the Catholic church's relationship with the Democratic party and the increasingly uncomfortable position many bishops are in since the Democratic party is so openly pro-abortion rights and anti-religious liberty. Note from Josh: Life Report has never been an anti-Catholic show, and that hasn't changed. Frankly, a lot of Protestants didn't even vote. But there's no way to have a frank dialogue about this issue without recognizing that the Catholic church in America has had a long relationship with the Democratic party and that relationship is clearly having an impact on elections that effect the rights of unborn babies. We welcomed the chance to have a Catholic expert on the subject explain what he has learned for the benefit of our audience.

Our favorite (nearly graduated) student from Notre Dame Law John Gerardi is back to give us an update on the current status of the different lawsuits against the HHS mandate. We talk about the kinds of entities that are suing and on what grounds, whether it's looking favorable or not and which religious groups have been exempted and why. Listener Questions: Michael from Tulsa, OK: Will Scientologists get an exemption for all medical treatments that go against their religion now that Priests for Life got an exemption?