Point of View July 30, 2024 – Hour 2 : Abortion as a Campaign Issue

[00:00:00] Hour 2, April 20, 2020 Hour 2, April 20, 2020 Across America, live, this is Point of View We've got an election coming up and abortion looks to be a very prominent issue, perhaps even more so than other election cycles.

[00:00:34] Joe Biden changed over the decades of his political career on the issue of abortion. He was pro-life, then he was pro-high-dement, which meant he didn't think taxpayers should have to pay for abortion.

[00:00:48] He made a big switch on that and then he decided after the dog's decision that Roe vs. Wade should become the law of the land. So he's become more and more pro-abortion over the years, but he still wasn't really great at talking about the issue.

[00:01:06] Well now, as Kamala Harris is probably going to be the nominee, she is very energetic on this issue and it's the only one where she's really shown out on the campaign trail at least before she was actually crowned with a coronation of being the candidate.

[00:01:26] She's speaking on many issues now, but abortion is close to her heart. So we're going to talk about abortion as an election issue and with me to do this is Brad Mattis.

[00:01:35] He's somebody I've known for a long time. He's a veteran of the pro-life cause. He's co-founder and president of Life Issues Institute and he has been host of the daily radio commentary life issues.

[00:01:48] Since 2003 it's heard on over 1,100 radio outlets. He also does half-hour radio specials and he covers breaking stories and in parts foundational educational topics on the life issues. You could really ask him anything about pro-life and he'll have the answer. Brad, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:02:08] Well, thank you, Penn. It's great to be with you. It's good to have you and when you think about the election and the presumptive nominee Kamala Harris, you got some calls when she received that coronation after never having won an election or a primary.

[00:02:27] When she received that you started receiving questions about her stances and so I've got a piece that you wrote on that and she started her pro-abortion activism, I guess, as attorney general in California, didn't she?

[00:02:46] Oh yes, and she was absolutely vicious against pro-lifers when she was California's attorney general. She supported a legislation that would have had it stood up to the Constitution would have forced pro-life pregnancy centers and medical centers to refer women to abortion facilities,

[00:03:12] which is utter ridiculous and would undermine the sole purpose of what they're there for. Is that the case that went to the Supreme Court? Did that case go to the Supreme Court? Yes. And of course, her side lost, right?

[00:03:30] It did. And we were very grateful for that, of course. But she has just been on the wrong side of history every single time that the abortion issue comes up. She has always advocated and not just in a moderate way.

[00:03:52] She has always been aggressive in her effort to promote abortion. Well, there was one other case that's worth mentioning because we covered this when it was happening and that is David Delightin who went undercover exposing Planned Parenthood's scheme of selling abortion baby body parts.

[00:04:09] And we talked about that at length here on Point of View. I'm sure you did too, Brad. She actually prosecuted the whistleblowers when David Delightin was one of them and it was just a draconian sentence that he got, wasn't it?

[00:04:25] Well, yeah. And that's what I mean when I say vicious. She, you know, normally whistleblowers are protected. They are appreciated for exposing some ghastly existence.

[00:04:39] And in this case it certainly was. They had absolute documentation that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby body parts and making money off of them.

[00:04:52] So what does Kamala Harris do? She doesn't pursue the guilty parties. She goes after the whistleblowers and they have been fined and Planned Parenthood is at their door wanting millions of dollars.

[00:05:09] And this can be laid at the feet of Kamala Harris. She is what I would call an extremist on the issue of abortion. So then she lands in the United States Senate and what has been her record there on the issue of life?

[00:05:26] Well, it didn't get any better. I'm sad to say twice she co-sponsored legislation that is considered the Democrats' dream legislative piece on abortion.

[00:05:40] It would have gone much farther than Roe v. Wade. She tells people or tries to claim that it only brings Roe back in federal legislative form, but it goes way beyond that.

[00:05:54] And she twice was a co-sponsor of that. She twice opposed legislation. Get this? For protection of babies who survive late term abortions that were botched.

[00:06:09] If they're abortions where the baby is born alive, they want to give the legislation advocated giving them basic medical care appropriate for their gestation or age in the womb.

[00:06:22] And she opposed that. So if you can imagine somebody so extreme that they would withhold medical care from babies who survived an abortion. So as Vice President Brad, Kamala Harris didn't really shine on any other issue. She kind of flunked the border czar position.

[00:06:45] But when the Dove's decision came down which wiped out Roe v. Wade, she really got on it. In fact, she launched this and I think this was at the behest of the president, the reproductive freedom tour.

[00:06:58] And she began speaking about abortion around the country. And she amazingly one day had a photo op at an abortion clinic. I can't imagine any other elected official that I've ever known of doing that at a Planned Parenthood facility.

[00:07:12] So she's boldly pro-abortion as Vice President. And so, you know, I guess we can expect the same if she becomes president. It's a little bit concerning. Yeah. Well, and as you pointed out that so-called reproductive freedom tour, the sole purpose was to advocate unlimited abortion throughout pregnancy.

[00:07:41] We're talking about all trimester abortion for any reason, for any purpose, and even protecting those who were involved in a infanticide after the baby is born alive.

[00:07:55] So nowhere in record has a candidate for president of the United States been so out there in extreme on the issue of wanting to kill innocent unborn babies.

[00:08:09] It's just, yes, it's rather frightening. And you know, Joe Biden up to this date in America's history has been the most pro-abortion president in our nation's history.

[00:08:22] But I fear should Kamala Harris get re-elected that she will eclipse Joe Biden, she will find more ways to increase the body count, more ways to persecute those who want to help women and give them alternatives. More right after this, Brad Mattis is my guest.

[00:08:44] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. One of my recent in-studio guests had a rags to riches story that was one more example of achieving the American dream, like the one we heard recently for J.D. Vance.

[00:09:12] My guest attributed his success to education and is a strong proponent of the American educational system. But he also acknowledged that education in America faces many challenges. Earlier this year I wrote a commentary about the 1983 assessment of American education from the National Commission on Excellence in Education.

[00:09:31] The panel lamented that if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre education performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.

[00:09:41] Forty years later, the state of education in America seems worse even though we spend more on education per capita than just about any country in the world. Not so long ago the U.S. was producing the best and brightest students in the world.

[00:09:53] Now they are about average in science and reading and below average in math. As a nation we don't even know our history or basic political facts.

[00:10:02] A study done by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation discovered that only one in three Americans could pass the U.S. citizenship test. During the recent Republican National Convention, we heard many speakers suggest school choice might be a solution.

[00:10:16] At a previous Republican convention, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice observed, when I look at your zip code I can tell whether you're going to get a good education. It is unlikely that school choice will be mentioned positively in the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

[00:10:31] An important issue in this election is how we can meet the education challenges before us. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view. Welcome back to Point of View. I'm Pena Dexter. I'm speaking with Brad Mattis of Life Issues Institute.

[00:11:00] We're talking about abortion as an election issue. And Brad, right after the Dobbs decision which struck down down row versus weight and we kept saying once row goes, abortion goes back to the states and that's what President Trump says that he wants to happen.

[00:11:19] And he's made the platform sort of fit that definition. Some people would like to have a national ban on abortion, others would like to re-establish row and codify it into our law. So you've got two distinct laws that are going to be passed on to the state.

[00:11:37] We'd like to re-establish row and codify it into our law. So you've got two distinct positions on this and I think that makes it for a hot button election issue, don't you? No, it does.

[00:11:51] And you know Trump is looking at the abortion issue and looking at the polling information and he realized that 80% of Americans do not support late term abortion. 75% support ending abortion after 15 weeks. So he's taking a position that is rock solid as far as the vast majority of Americans.

[00:12:19] Would he sign legislation that would save more babies? I think he would, but his public persona is such that he's going after late term abortions where he thinks a vast majority of Americans are with him. And he's right.

[00:12:37] And what we have learned, Hannah, from watching the elections throughout the states when pro-life candidates make their stand known and expose the other side for their extremism on abortion. Are there the ones that are winning elections and we've seen this time and time again?

[00:12:58] You know, it was sort of at the beginning right after DOBS. There were some ballot measures in states like Kansas and Kentucky, Michigan and California and they didn't really go the way the pro-lifers had hoped.

[00:13:13] But what's happening, and I guess I could also say that the Republican platform has been scaled way back. It's much shorter and sweeter. Let's put it that way.

[00:13:25] And there's no human life amendment in it and there's no national law, you know, doesn't advocate a national prohibition of abortion because of this position that Trump is taking. So that's as it is.

[00:13:40] But as you said, none of that precludes candidates being pro-life and going out and speaking about abortion in ways that touch people's hearts and ways that people can get behind them with.

[00:13:54] And I put an article on our website that you wrote, Brad, it's called campaigning on unrestricted abortion fails. People don't want unrestricted abortion up to the point of birth. They want some limits on abortion and you've got a lot of examples there.

[00:14:10] One of them was in a state Supreme Court race in Georgia. Can you tell us about that one? Yeah, that's my favorite one. I'm glad you brought it up. And not only were we watching it, the media was watching.

[00:14:26] They thought it was a bellwether of races to come. You know, they predicted they channeled chicken little and said the sky is going to fall and women are going to vote out pro-life first because there are outrage.

[00:14:39] Well, here was a race for the state Supreme Court in Georgia. A former pro-bortion Democrat Congressman John Barrow ran against an incumbent justice, Andrew Pinson. And the reason he picked him was because as a solicitor general in Georgia, he successfully defended the heartbeat law.

[00:15:01] So Barrow centered his entire campaign on abortion, even getting ethical reviews against him from his peers because he stated a position where he would rule before Eve even knew any cases were coming before him. That's a big no no. My parenthood endorsed him and he lost.

[00:15:25] He lost by 10 percentage points. And this just goes to show that extremism on abortion does not win elections. And if I may, West Virginia had a primary and 87% of the candidates that were endorsed by a pro-life pack won.

[00:15:45] 87%. And it had an effect on the state Supreme Court, which is so important in a post-row environment. It went from a balance of just marginally pro-life to one to four in support of four to one in support of life.

[00:16:04] And the locals just said that voters support opinions and stands that are closer to them on abortion. And she was, they're absolutely right. Candidates need to stand firm and they need to expose their opposition for the extremists that they are.

[00:16:24] I know that there are some, you know, more liberal states where these referendums, these ballot measures that would take row and put it into the state constitution. So you'd have a row versus weight in the state and you'd have expanded abortion.

[00:16:41] It may even be more draconian than row versus weight with regard to allowing abortions. And so, you know, the limits on abortion that states have been working on for 40 years or 50 years in those cases would be wiped out, wouldn't they?

[00:16:59] They would. And in Florida where I live, Pena, we are looking at a referendum that would scale back to victories. We have heartbeat law on the books here where most all unborn babies are protected in Florida.

[00:17:16] And what happens is George Soros and other billionaires come in at the 11th hour.

[00:17:23] They produce slick ads that are full of innuendos and outright lies, and they just saturate the market and persuade people to say, you know, women aren't going to be able to get medical care surrounding their pregnancies if they're having a miscarriage or a topic pregnancy.

[00:17:44] That's a blatant lie. They get that care in whatever state they're in, all 50 states have that protection. They tell them that they will lose access to contraception unless that extreme referendum passes and that's not true at all.

[00:18:00] They pass those on lies and then they hide the true nature and the extreme lengths to which these referendum go to, you know, put this extremism, abortion extremism into the state constitution.

[00:18:18] So we have to really fight that. We have to raise the money to try to counter them.

[00:18:24] And more importantly, we have to get pro-lifers out to vote. We have to make sure they're educated and savvy to seek you the smoke and mirrors of the other side and stand up for the babies in the polling booth or if they vote early by mail.

[00:18:41] So you talked about getting pro-lifers out to vote and also getting them to support in advance, I would say pro-life candidates.

[00:18:50] And then the idea because we had so many defeats, I would say in the pro-life movement right after the Dobbs decision, but it was not a natural election cycle all the time.

[00:19:01] Some of these were like special elections. So now we have a presidential election. It's a good opportunity for all kinds of candidates to give a really, really solid pro-life message, isn't it?

[00:19:13] It is. But I wouldn't give the pro-borts too much credit in a post-Dobbs environment because we had several states past far reaching legislation. We had a high number of victories legislatively and many thousands of babies are being saved as a result today.

[00:19:34] But yeah, they came at us with everything. And you know what I tell people, kind of, is that abortion is one of Satan's most effective tools to drag souls away from Jesus.

[00:19:46] And he's not going down without a fight. And we have seen that. We have seen the extremism, this Satanistic type attacks against us and it's not going to wane. It's going to continue.

[00:20:01] But we have to gird our loins, so to speak. Stand on the righteousness of protecting innocent life and do all that we can. And that's why the average person, those listening to us today, Pena, need to understand that they have to engage.

[00:20:20] God has given them the ability and authority to hire people who will make laws, to represent them. And they must be educated voters. They need to know who the pro-life candidates are all the way down to dog catcher and vote for them.

[00:20:39] And I say that, Pena. When I say I wouldn't vote a dog catcher into office unless I knew he or she was pro-life, people snicker but people climb up their own political ladder of success.

[00:20:51] Look how fast Barack Obama went up his ladder. He went from community organizers to... Brad, let me ask you a question. We're coming up on a break. Do you have a few more minutes to stick with me after the break or do you have to go? Sure.

[00:21:05] Okay, good. Good. Brad Madison is with me, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to open the phones 800-351-1212. In case you want to ask Brad a question about the abortion issue as it pertains to the elections and also perhaps action items, what we can do.

[00:21:20] He's got a brain full of pro-life wisdom. So we're going to pick his brain a little bit longer and so stick with us. We'll be right back with more point of view.

[00:21:31] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all depending on their politics.

[00:21:45] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up, but we can't. We shouldn't. We must not.

[00:21:58] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[00:22:13] And that's what we say to you today. This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos. We can't do it alone, but together with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.

[00:22:30] Invest in biblical clarity today at PointOfView.net or call 1-800-347-5151, PointOfView.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:01] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again is Pena Dexter.

[00:23:13] And my guest, Brad Mattis, he's co-founder and president of Life Issues Institute. And I might mention that he's done a lot of great media on the pro-life issue. He hosted some half-hour radio specials.

[00:23:28] And he also, he was executive producer and host for a weekly half-hour TV program called Facing Life Head On. It ran for eight seasons and it garnered three Emmy awards and other accolades.

[00:23:42] So this is a man that knows whereup he speaks and he does it in lots of different ways. And Brad, thank you for sticking with me.

[00:23:51] I want to mention a piece I saw in the Wall Street Journal today. Election triggers battle of the sexes and it talks about how under 30, voters under 30 have been Democrat voters.

[00:24:04] They've been a pillar, says the Journal of the Democratic Coalition since Reagan left office in 1989. But it's showing cracks now that pillar is young men are defecting from the party

[00:24:15] and they remain strongly behind, women remain strongly behind Democrats for Congress but men are moving. And one of the issues that is taking them there is abortion.

[00:24:29] Student loan forgiveness is another issue and there are other issues that affect the lives of young adults. But it's very interesting to me, Brad, that young men are going more conservative while the women are remaining liberal.

[00:24:45] So I'm sure you've got some polling that talks about the differences between men and women on the abortion issue, do you?

[00:24:52] Yeah, well we do. And that pretty much falls in line with what you've said. The higher educated they are, which reflects big city thinking and the impact of that and being exposed to a constant barrage of pro-abortion propaganda.

[00:25:10] They tend to be more pro-abortion. However, women and men in the more rural areas of the smaller towns tend to be more pro-life. So we see that.

[00:25:23] But this piece that you mentioned just now stands to reason and I want to share with you very briefly something, a CNN reporter, his name is Harry Epton.

[00:25:34] And he said on air that he was speechless because he saw the polls, they looked at multiple polls and it shows that Donald Trump is getting more support from black Americans.

[00:25:49] Now get this especially young black voters. And at the time while Biden was still in the race, they said that his support was an I quote, cratering.

[00:26:01] So this is just another piece of the puzzle panam that when we stand back and look, I think the Democrats have overextended. They have on issues.

[00:26:13] They have stood for everything that's evil and wrong and look at what they're doing on the border and how Americans are paying a price.

[00:26:22] Some of those illegal aliens are murdering our citizens. They are lining up for free health care and other benefits that even our veterans struggle to get.

[00:26:35] So I think all of this people are watching this, seeing it and understanding where our country is going. And I think they're rather shocked by it and afraid of where America is headed.

[00:26:47] So why do you think young women are still remaining pro-abortion? And you really hear a lot of them being very vocal about it today after Dobbs. Yeah, you do hear about it to a degree that the media are over exaggerating that I think is a piece of that.

[00:27:11] But it's part of the propaganda that people get from social media and the legacy media when there's a constant diet of that and they don't really get the facts as far as what abortion actually does to an unborn child and the mother.

[00:27:28] They aren't told that in many cases with the fathers and mothers of an aborted baby struggle oftentimes day to day with the reality that they took part in the death of their unborn child.

[00:27:42] I think education is so very important and that's why Life Issues Institute is dedicated to education. Our goal is to reach those women and those women and men who are in the middle,

[00:27:55] who are persuasive, who don't necessarily have an opinion on abortion. And we've got an upcoming project that we're working to launch in Florida that will reach just those kinds of voters.

[00:28:08] And that is...you can go to pointofview.net and click through to Life Issues. But what's the website? Lifeissues.org? Lifeissues.org. Okay. Lifeissues.org. Okay, great. And we've got... Go ahead.

[00:28:23] We've got over 5,000 pages of educational information from fertilization to euthanasia and everything in between. If you can't find what you're looking for, let us know and we'll make sure you get the information you need.

[00:28:35] It's quite a robust website. I do want to mention that one article that I put about campaigning on unrestricted abortion fails. There are many other examples of people that won because they're pro-life.

[00:28:46] So you can go there too. But I want to ask you, Brad...first of all, I have the phones open 800-351-1212. And my question would be, Brad said a lot of people that are really, really pro-life, they would not vote for a dog catcher that supported abortion rights, full abortion rights.

[00:29:07] They wouldn't vote for a person for any office, even if abortion wasn't involved in that office. Because there's just something about being a person who's pro-abortion that makes them perhaps not a good public official.

[00:29:20] So how would you handle that? Would you vote for a person that was pro-abortion even if their job had nothing to do with abortion? 800-351-1212.

[00:29:30] But I want to ask you, Brad, about medical abortions. Because both Donald Trump and JD Vance have said they have kind of backtracked on being against medical abortions or the abortion pill.

[00:29:43] They've kind of signaled that they would not oppose the availability of that and getting, you know, mailing it in and all of that. So what was that calculation about, do you think?

[00:29:57] Well, that's a worrying position, frankly. Chemical abortion is responsible for at least 70% of all abortions done. What's happening when that pill was developed and that there were medical studies on it?

[00:30:14] The researchers emphatically said this must be done in a medical environment with multiple visits to the physician. And now we are seeing pills mailed in.

[00:30:26] I one time got online and pretended I was a 15-year-old girl. My parents knew nothing of the abortion. I didn't have anything to confirm the pregnancy.

[00:30:39] And still, with a credit card number, they would have sent me those pills. And I'll tell you, if you are experiencing ectopic pregnancy, the symptoms of that are very similar to the symptoms of chemical abortion.

[00:30:54] And ectopic pregnancy could become a life or death situation. And one of the things that women have to deal with is profuse bleeding is an expected occurrence.

[00:31:07] Lasting for two weeks is not unusual. That's about the average. So there's a lot of concerns, a lot of worries about chemical abortion. And if that's an accurate depiction of their position on chemical abortion, then they need to be educated. They need to understand the dangers.

[00:31:29] And here's the thing too. It's a predatory tool that men have already used where they are putting these pills into drinks and food of women that are unaware because they don't want that baby to be born.

[00:31:45] They don't want to pay child support for that baby. And those laws, those loose laws are making it easy for men to get these drugs and be predators against girlfriends or wives.

[00:31:59] Yeah, and I'm afraid that the Dove's decision was one of the catalysts for the increase in these medical abortions. No abortion is good, but the medical abortion is very dangerous not only for the baby, of course, but for mothers. So yes, that's a big concern.

[00:32:17] I guess one of my hopes is that, as you mentioned, Brad, education is very important lobbying and just getting candidates aware of the issues that surround some of the positions they're taking. So I hope somebody does that with Trump advance.

[00:32:37] And helping them understand that this is a tool being used against women. This is a tool that threatens their lives. And this is a tool that's being mailed to women with no direction, no information, no medical supervision. And we are going to see repercussions of that.

[00:32:56] Brad, thank you so much for another... We're on a break and we are up on a break, so just real quick.

[00:33:05] When women pass their baby at home with chemical abortion, that's a whole nother mess that they have to deal with knowing every time they walk into their bathroom, that's a place they're basically...

[00:33:17] Heartbreaking. Brad Mattis, thank you so much. I really appreciate your work that you do and you're joining me today. Happy to join you. Thanks for having me, Pina.

[00:33:29] All right, that's Brad Mattis, Life Issues Institute. We are taking calls 800-351-1212. We'll do that right after the break. Stick with us for more of Point of View. You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] We're taking your calls at 800-351-1212. Iris is calling in from Georgia on WLPE. Hi, Iris. Thanks for calling in.

[00:34:13] Yes, you know, I listened to your program today. My thought is this, with Kavalia Harris and Eddie Pro-abortion persons, pro-life people have been too polite and we are shy away from telling the exact truth.

[00:34:31] I think that a sonogram of a live baby in a mother's womb should be put on television. With this word, this is what Kavalia Harris quotes you to kill.

[00:34:44] Yeah, I don't know. I think that would be good. And I do notice that there are a lot of pro-life organizations including Lila Rose's Live Action and the Heartbeat International.

[00:34:56] They've both now gotten in trouble for their graphic depictions of the development of the baby inside the mom, but it's only telling the truth.

[00:35:06] So there is a battle right now about that message and I think you're right though. We need to tell the truth and show the truth.

[00:35:15] The battle is because it is the truth, they will battle us and they will try to do just as they did. They'll try to lock you up. They'll try to do things.

[00:35:26] But the truth has got to be told because innocent babies are dying by the thousands every day in America, all over the world, but especially in this country where people should have the right to live.

[00:35:40] Yes, and I think the battle has only been intensified since Roe vs. Wade was struck down. We have great opportunities now in states that will do so to limit, put very common sense limitations on abortions in more moderate states,

[00:35:58] in pro-life states ban all abortions which we've done here in Texas and some other states have done that. And then in the states that want to have abortion, still some common sense limits are appropriate and can be accomplished if you can educate people about them.

[00:36:16] So thank you so much Iris. I think showing the pictures is always a good idea and certainly at pregnancy centers, most of them now have ability to show a sonogram to the expectant mother and those save a lot of babies.

[00:36:32] So thanks for calling in. Thanks for your comment. And ladies and gentlemen, I have posted a couple of other articles that I haven't even gotten to because I was so glad to be able to keep Brad, Mattis a little bit longer.

[00:36:45] But I do want to kind of point you to them so that you can read them for yourself because I don't want these to go unread. One of them is called The Coup and the Country and it's by Joshua Trevino.

[00:36:58] He is at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He is such a thinker and he's kind of making the case that what happened with Joe Biden stepping out of the campaign was really a coup.

[00:37:14] And he said, really gave up even though he's remaining the president. He gave up his power. He really has no power. He says, Coup terminology is not overwrought. A sitting president of the United States has had his political future terminated.

[00:37:30] And this means his political present is ended as well. Absent potential, there is no power and therefore no purpose. The logical corollary to the immediate end of his campaign therefore ought to be the immediate end of his presidency.

[00:37:46] He's hanging on. Don't know how long he will, maybe he will go through the Democrat convention. Maybe he'll hang on until the end of his term. But that's a good point.

[00:37:58] And he said that on that Sunday afternoon when Joe Biden lost the ability to do nearly every meaningful thing intrinsic to the presidency including a real cooperation with the legislative branch, persuading the nation to make war and representation of the whole American people in government.

[00:38:21] He basically gave all that over. Josh Trevino says what's left is a headless apparatus dominated but not led, ruled but not governed by the thousands of functionaries and the administrative state.

[00:38:36] And I would posit that the functionaries have been running the government for a long time probably for all of Joe Biden's presidency. But I would like to recommend that piece to you, the coup and the country confronting the overthrow of a president.

[00:38:54] Many good points made in there by Josh Trevino. Let's go back to the phones. Sheila is calling in from California on KYCC. Hi Sheila.

[00:39:02] Thanks for calling. Hi, how are you? You're welcome. You're welcome. I was just saying to your message about the Kamala Harris and her opinions on abortion and stuff. And what I feel in my heart is that we need to pray, we need to pray that

[00:39:19] that America is seeing open their eyes to the truth of what she's saying. She's saying that we're out, she's out to protect our bodies. Our bodies are fully protected. We have every right to do everything that we need to do with our bodies.

[00:39:31] But what she's protecting the ability to murder a baby. I don't understand how people, smart educated people can say that the baby is part of the woman's body? Not.

[00:39:48] It's a totally, what it is is just plain simple murder. Don't tell me you're trying to protect my body. I know that if I go to the doctors, anything I want done to my body is protected. I have full choice of what I need to do.

[00:40:02] It's already protected. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, I just think that it's really the rhetoric of individualism and elevation of self over others. The baby is an other person. The mother has that baby in her body. She's really responsible to protect that baby. Yeah.

[00:40:26] I just, we just have to pray that people are allowed to become available to separate what she's just trying to say.

[00:40:38] It's just so covered up with the sheet that we're going to protect your body. We're going to protect your body. No, you're going to allow people to kill their babies.

[00:40:47] Well, good words, Sheila. Thank you so much for this common sense. Common sense is the order of the day I think. In fact, I do think this is an election about common sense.

[00:40:57] There's so many issues that don't make common sense. And there's an antidote. There's another side to the issue that does make common sense.

[00:41:05] So we're going to try to make some of that here on point of view. I might mention Kirby is traveling and you're going to have Dr. Merrill Matthews in, I think, tomorrow this week.

[00:41:19] And then on Friday, I'm not sure which day he's in, but he will be hosting and he's always so much fun and filled with wonderful guests and information. Oh, the millennial roundtable will also be taken over the studio one of those days.

[00:41:34] And then on Friday, I'll be back in with Dr. Matthews and also Jeremy Dyes for our Friday weekend edition. So that'll be what's happening. One more piece that I posted up at pointofview.net is when the decline of American Christianity gets personal.

[00:41:50] It's about this pastor, Ryan Burge, who he does all these graphs. He has a sub-stack, graphs about religion, about really the rise of the nuns and the decline of mainstream Protestantism in America.

[00:42:05] They're very disturbing. And what happened to him, he's also a pastor, American Baptist pastor for over 15 years.

[00:42:12] And this past weekend, his own, this affected him and his own church shut down. It's a story that made the AP and he wrote a piece on it that shares his own personal account of the closure.

[00:42:26] I posted something from Erin Wren about that and that's just another sort of heart-rending and sad story we told one at the beginning of the program.

[00:42:36] But, you know, let's try to be part of the solution with all of these. The church will not die out. We know that.

[00:42:44] But it's sad that it's become less of an influence on the culture. We try to stay influential in the culture and we hope you do too.

[00:42:53] Stick with us every day. We've got a show that we try to present to you and we hope that you will join us tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me today. And just have a wonderful night. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Steve.

[00:43:05] And thank you, Karen, for all your help. And we'll see you on Friday. The Bible tells us not to worry. And yet, there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today.

[00:43:18] Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry. God gives us a next step. He says we need to pray. But sometimes even knowing what to pray can be difficult. And that is why Point of View has relaunched our Pray for America movement,

[00:43:37] a series of weekly emails to guide you in prayer for our nation. Each week you'll receive a brief update about a current issue affecting Americans, along with a written prayer that you can easily share with others. We'll also include a short free resource for you in each email

[00:43:57] so you can learn more about the issue at hand. Will you commit to Pray for America? Go to PointOfView.net. Click on the Pray for America banner at the top of the page to subscribe. Again, that's PointOfView.net.

[00:44:17] Click on the Pray for America banner. Let's pray together for God to make a difference in America. Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.