Understanding Amendment 4: The Battle Over Abortion Rights

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Welcome to the Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeeternity.org well, welcome to another edition of the Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We are here to provide for you biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life.

I don't know if you guys heard about this, but there was an election in America recently. Yes, there, there were actually was. And believe it or not, well, there's many in the media in America that do not believe it. But Donald J. Trump won again. That is the third election in a row he has won. Well, I didn't say that he was president three times in a row, but it was the third time he won.

It's either that or there was a great rapture of the Democrat voters because, yeah, hundreds of thousands of votes just suddenly evaporated in this election. I don't know what happened. It's either that or they never existed in the first place. But Amman's razor, easier to believe they never existed in the first place. I know that puts me on the terrorist watch list from Joe Biden. I get it.

And if you don't know that, just go back to, oh, back three years ago now when Joe Biden first got into office, we did an episode on his view of national security defining what a domestic terrorist is. And yes, if you questioned the 2020 election, he defined you as a domestic terrorist. If you did, welcome to the club. We are now the winners.

So with that, what I want to do though, as much as we want to celebrate the election and the fact that there is a reprieve on the Marxist agenda, as some described it, a slapdown. More importantly, there were other things on the agenda we want to talk about. And if you watched when I was on the your Calvinist YouTube channel with Keith Foskey, we did an election night. I would argue it was the most fun election night reporting on the Internet.

And so because, well, when you have Keith Foskey, it's going to be fun. So we had a lot of fun. We were partying, giving a lot of reporting and if you remember that there were two people that were giving a lot of stats and updates from the election and details and clearly more politically minded, way too politically minded than the rest one was myself and my guest Matthew here tonight. So Matthew, would you mind introducing yourself to the Rap Report audience?

Well, I would love to and thank you for having me on today. I do agree that hanging out with Keith and friends on that podcast was a lot of fun. Keith Foske and I have been friends for several years now. We actually met because our church hosted a debate between Dr. James White and Michael Brown were taking on two pastors that were supporting homosexuality in the church down in Florida here, and we hosted that debate and I got to be the moderator, which was quite a bit of fun.

So Keith, Keith and I met then, have had a great time since then. Who am I? I'm nobody special, just a native Florida boy that grew up here in Jacksonville. Currently live just south of Jacksonville in St. John's County. Elder in my church at Switzerland Community Church down in, also in St. John's County. And just a data nerd. I love digging into politics from a data perspective and figuring out shifts and trends and all that sort of thing.

And probably what will be more salient to our conversation today really had a lot of vigor and passion against one of the ballot measures here in Florida, that being Amendment four. And so as we look at that, you were very active. And so I want to, I want to. That's why I had wanted to have you on after, after the discussion we had on Keith's program, because you very informative, but you were, you were working very actively.

And so we got into some discussion on Keith's program and I mentioned it there. I'll mention it now before you start talking about what, you know, what this was all about with this proposition for. Because where a lot of people were just looking at who won the presidency, maybe they were looking at the Senate and the House, but the propositions were also quite important. In fact, I believe seven states approved voter id, which I just think is so amazing.

Do you realize that Joe Biden has done more for conservatism than any conservative, even Reagan? I mean, it's crazy to think about. Joe Biden entered office with two states that believed in constitutional carry. There's now 22. He entered with 22 states that had, I think it's 22 states that had voter ID and now there's seven more. Right. It's just amazing to see what he has done for conservatism. And we call it the blowback effect. Yep. Yeah. Now you.

Prop four was something that we, we ended up seeing and I mentioned this on Keith Foskey's show and I also mentioned it one of our podcasters, Truth Espresso with Daniel Minick. And you can go back and listen to the podcast he did about the he lives in Colorado, and Colorado had a amendment to legalize abortion at every stage of pregnancy, which was really strange because it's already the law there.

And so he went into describing some of the things and I called him up and let him know because there was one thing he might have missed. And he did because he told me he didn't know about it. So one of the things that the Democrats or Marxists had had recognized, and I'm saying the Marxist versus Democrats, because not all Democrats are Marxist, but the Marxists are the ones pushing the agenda.

And what you ended up seeing is that they had realized that even in red states when abortion was on the ballot, Democrats won. So they also discovered George Soros, that even though George Soros, not being an American citizen, is limited on how he can fund and affect the American politics, he found a loophole. And that loophole allowed him to funnel as much money as he wanted into local propositions.

And so what he tried to do in every state was get a proposition about abortion in every state, hoping that by funneling tons of money for abortion, that would help Democrats. So it was a way that he could funnel a ton of money legally because he couldn't do it as a foreigner in any other way. I mean, he tries to set up these organizations in America that he funds them. And. But that was the plan.

And so that's why in Colorado, even where it's already the law of the land, they put it on the ballot. So it's something we just had to realize. But a lot of that got pushed back because, you know, Matthew, how many states had, if you know how many states had the abortion on the ballot. As far as I'm aware, and I don't have a list in front of me, there were 10. And the results were as follows. Seven of them passed, three of them did not.

The three that were defeated were in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota. South Dakota sent it packing, 60 to 40 against. And their simple majority rule to approve it. That was no thanks to their completely useless governor, who did not say a single word about it the entire time. It was just grassroots South Dakotans. And I actually have some friends up there that I was messaging back and forth with and talking about that fight. They just beat it old school style, just lips and shoe leather.

There was Nebraska, which was a, some are calling it a partial win because Nebraska had two ballot initiatives one was basically a copy of Amendment 4 in Florida, which is any abortion at any time for any reason. Basically, that one failed by about a point. Then there was another one that said no abortions beyond 12 weeks. But if the legislature wants to be stricter than 12 weeks, they can. That one passed.

So this weird dueling amendments kind of thing going on in Nebraska, it's some people, there's a lot of talk about was that really a win or not? Because it did, it did put in the Constitution no abortions after 12 weeks. But the legislature can be stricter than that if they want. And they defeated the abortion at any time for any reason. So I would have been interested to see what if both had passed. What would they do then? Yeah, that would have been interesting.

Yeah. And I'll push pause on the ones that we, we beat for a minute. The ones that we, that abortion rights, air quote, were put into constitutions. Colorado, as you mentioned, Maryland, there was one other one. And it's, it's. My brain's failing me right now. Yeah, those two. That was always going to happen. Oh, New York, that was it. New York State, which again was always going to happen. Exactly. And I think you're right about trying to juice Democratic turnout. I think that was part of it.

But it was also virtue signaling. It was the idea of, well, our legislatures have already passed these laws, but what if someday the Republicans take over? We want to lock it behind a constitutional amendment so that it's done. You can never. Well, not never, you'd have to pass another initiative, but to where no evil lawmaker can take away your right to choose. That was really, it was virtue signaling. That was the idea behind it.

Ones other, other ones that we lost that were in otherwise conservative states. Arizona approved theirs running away 62 to 38 or. Yeah, it was not even close. And that's a state that Donald Trump is probably going to win by about seven. And we'll know that sometime around his second, or rather around J.D. vance's second term, Arizona will be done counting votes and then we'll know for sure. But Arizona is still counting votes.

The their Prop 139 is probably going to end up passing by 62, 63, something like that. So they ran that. They won that one running away. And then finally Missouri, which I think might be the most painful loss of the night. Missouri, very conservative state enacted after Dobbs enacted the very first, was the very first to come out and say our abortion ban is now in effect. It was a total band aside from mail order Abortion pills, which I know that's a different topic.

But as far as surgical or clinical abortions, let's say Missouri's was defeated, or excuse me, Missouri's abortion amendment took it to the far extreme, which is basically at any time, for any reason, and it passed like 5,149. And again, a completely useless chief executive who did nothing to fight back on that or to push back on it. So aside from Florida, which I know that's why you're. We're having this conversation. That's kind of the lay of the land nationally of how things went.

Yeah. And this is the thing that for a lot of people, they think the only thing to vote on is president. Right. And what you ended up having is you had a bunch of people that voted for president, didn't vote for House or Senate, don't vote for these different propositions. They just look at the elections as president. Yep. And we know that because.

Well, you see that in the, in the voting, you see it where, you know, if you voted party line, you should see the same amount, but you see much more votes for president and then less for Senate, less for House and less for the, the initiatives. Now we, I will admit the initiatives are often worded in a confusing way. Whoever, whoever controls the, whichever party kind of controls the election board gets to word the elections the way they want.

I. One thing I do like when I used to live in New Jersey is New Jersey was required to have a summary statement to explain the confusing language that they would put. But often that summary statement was still confusing. You were like, we'd be like, wait, is am I voting for this? Or like, what am I actually voting for? And they'll do that so that they can pass something they know the majority doesn't like. Yep. And exactly right.

What it takes is someone like yourself to get out there and communicate to people what the proposition is about. Because a lot of them are purposely confusing. And that's, I think, why a lot of people ignore them. But I think as American citizens and Christians, we have a responsibility to vote. And as that responsibility, we have a responsibility to make sure it's an informed vote. So we can't just ignore these things because they're confusing. I try to teach my people because we had a class.

So like I said, I'm an elder in my local church and I was teaching class during our Christian education time on Sunday morning about it was called Biblical Worldview. But it really got down to how should we be voting. So we covered Amendment 3 in Florida, which was a marijuana legalization amendment, which failed. We covered Amendment 4, of course, which was the abortion for any reason at any time amendment, which failed. But there's also candidates, right?

Like some people say, well, Donald Trump is, you know, personally objectionable and his character is this or that. And, and, you know, like good hearted, honest, devout Christians could have some questions and needed their pastors to step up and help them work through it. Not just a flat endorsement for Trump or whatever, but to help them think through these things. And so I taught my people, it was almost like a mini civics lesson. I was like, listen, federalism still exists.

The states have some things they can do. The local counties have some things

they can do. And yes, the president matters, and it matters quite a lot. But, but it was never supposed to be this important. President comes from the word preside. He was just supposed to preside over the federal government and not do tons and tons of stuff. Now the stakes are much higher because of the way that office has been. You know, how it's, how it's, it's, it's developed over time.

But, and I think I said this on Keith's podcast, my hierarchy of things I cared about were at the very top was Amendment 4 in Florida. Like, I cared about the other amendments in the other states. But this is my, this is where I, I'm a native Floridian. This is where I grew. This is what the place I care about. And I love babies and I'm a Christian. This is the one I care about the most. And then number two was the Senate, because that has implications for judicial picks and stuff.

Number three was the marijuana amendment, and number four was the president. And people like, how could you not care? I'm like, I didn't say I don't care. I'm just saying in my hierarchy of things that are going to impact my life and the judgment or lack thereof of God on my land, this is the order I picked them in. So, yeah, I completely agree. People should, people should vote. They should vote with an eye towards restraining evil and rewarding good as much as possible.

And they should be informed when they do. So, yeah, crazy to think about that. It is possible since we had four years of Biden and I think I said this on Keith's show. I don't know if I did, but Joe Biden, Donald Trump will be able to do more in 2024 than he would have in 2020.

It's crazy to think about had he won in 2020, he probably would have had to fight with the the, the House and the Senate, which would have given them a larger majority in both in the midterm, and he wouldn't be able to get as much done. Now he comes in with a, with a majority, we think, in both. And the fact, this is a crazy thing to think about. He put in three Supreme Court justices. There are two more in their 70s, one that's close. You have Alito, Thomas that are both in their 70s.

And then you have the Supreme Court justice, the Chief Justice, Roberts. His name was just eluding me. I think he's, I think he's 68. 69. 69. So there is a chance. And I, I don't, I, to be honest, I don't see Robert stepping down in the next four years, but I could see the other two. But you could, you could have one person, Donald Trump, that could put five or maybe six Supreme Court justices in. Yep. And if he was to put in three more conservative justices.

So six out of nine would be firmly conservative. It would be. And he's choosing young people. I mean, my first pick personally, I think if, if Alito or Thomas decide to resign, my hope is that he puts Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court. I could see that Cruz has argued in front of the court before. And I'm glad you went to the Supreme Court because even as Keith would tell you, I'm actually more of a Supreme Court nerd than I am any other form of politics.

I will admit in public on a podcast that I am the kind of guy that actually listens to Supreme Court oral arguments for fun sometimes. I know that that makes me some sort of fore species to people, but I find it fun. But yeah, I will just say Alito and Thomas have been far more constitutionally solid justices than anyone else. Well, then Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuch. Granted.

Listen, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett, Trump's three appointees have been 7,000 times better than a would be Hillary Clinton nominee. Don't misunderstand me at all on that. But Gorsuch in Bostock versus Clayton county really wrote a horrible opinion there. And Kavanaugh and Barrett have both had a couple of issues where they've really squished out on. They're still good 90% of the time, but Alito and Thomas are at that 99% level. And I just don't know. I don't know if he'll find some like that.

But I'll take, I'll take six out of nine. Being at the 90% level, I think that'll generally Work. Yeah, I think. See, and that's why I say Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz would be as conservative as Alito or Thomas than anyone else. And the fact that he just won his Senate seat back after they spent, I mean, they spent more money trying to. In New York, California, all this money from the Democrats came from all these other states to try to get rid of Ted Cruz.

That's how much they don't like Ted Cruz, which. Which I actually, I thought was great when Ted Cruz won, because it meant that was all wasted money. That's money that didn't go toward Democrats, that, that could have won. So, hey, Democrats, keep that policy going. Texas, I think, electorally, just kind of overall, the biggest surprises of the night to me were Illinois, New York and Texas.

And the reason is because Joe Biden won the state of Illinois by 19 points and Kamala Harris is going to end up winning it by seven. Well, I, when we were doing the show, I was pointing out my home state of New Jersey. Yeah. Which usually has like a 20 point lead for the Democrat. And while we were doing the show, New Jersey had changed from Democrat to leaning Democrat. Yep. For president. And I was like, I kept watching it and it was getting closer and closer.

And then the, the ballot dump from, from Newark, but Jersey went only 5% for the Democrat. Now RFK was in there. So it becomes the question, what was RFK on there? The point, Half a point for rfk. Did that go? Would that have gone for Trump if he was off the ballot? Or was it people that said, I don't like Kamala, I don't like rfk. This is New Jersey. We know the Democrats going to win. I'm going to, you know, or sorry, didn't like Kamala, didn't like Trump. And so they voted for rfk.

And so they were Democrats that just didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris. Yeah, it could be. And, and so. So it could be that the Democrat won in New Jersey by anywhere from four and a half to five and a half percent. The thing, though is, here's a crazy thing to think about.

That puts New Jersey as a swing state. Which is wild. Yeah, wild. I mean, like saying Alabama is a swing state. That's just crazy. I mean, if, if, if J.D. vance goes to New Jersey like Trump did, and think about this. Why was it that New York and New Jersey were so close this year? Because Trump was forced to only campaign in those states because he had to be in a court case every day in New York City. And so here's a judge that is trying to. I'm going to keep you off the campaign trail.

And yet what did it do? It. It kind of forced him. He couldn't be very far. So he set up campaigning all in, in these heavy blue areas, tops it off with a Madison Square Garden event. And people are like going, hey, like, I have a friend of mine, he came down the day that the massive Square Garden. I was preaching in a church. He came down and he said the crowds that were when he was coming down to Pennsylvania, for me to actually came in Jersey for me to pick him up.

Okay. The crowds first thing in the morning were so big, he was like, New York could go for Trump. He really thought there was the chance. And I had. I mean, if, if Jersey or New York goes for Trump, that's it. You know, it's like it's over. So it would be crazy to think that four years from now we're talking about Jersey as a swing state. Yeah. It will remain to be seen if that's the Donald Trump effect or if that's general Republican policy is appealing to them.

Because you have to start thinking, what advance would a Desantis, would a Haley, would whoever else. Would they be as appealing there? Don't know. I don't think as appealing as Trump. I think there's something special with him in those New England states because of his background, being from Queens and all that. And I do think, though, that a J.D. vance or a, you know, your governor there, Sanchez, either one of them, what they do different is explain conservatism.

I mean, look, for the record, Donald Trump is not a conservative, correct? Agreed. Donald Trump is a libertarian. He voted Democrat until Barack Obama. He supported Democrats until Barack Obama. He donated to Kamala Harris's Senate campaign as recently as like 2014 or something like that. Yeah. And he's. He donated to Hillary, to, to. Sorry, to, to Bill Clinton's campaign. So you look at, I mean, this is the problem that I see right now in American politics for conservatism.

We don't have anybody who is really speaking on what conservatism is. You have the people that we're looking to. Donald Trump, a libertarian, Elon Musk, a libertarian, Joe Rogan, a libertarian. They're not conservatives. But those are the three people that people are crediting with this, the turnout and this election win. I think a lot of it's got to go to Joe Biden himself because, you know, he was clearly undermining Kamala every time. Kamala, actually, the rare time she did something.

Well, he would be like these garbage people. Yeah. Yeah, man. His. His speech after. So she conceded. And then his speech, whatever. The next day, he was giggling, he was smiling really funny. I haven't seen him smile in a long time. But. But she. I. He's still bitter about getting forced off. And I think there's a little bit of schadenfreude when Kamala. Kamala wins. But. Yeah, well. And I think this is why you end up seeing, just realistically here, he's forced off the ticket, he's upset.

She comes out. One of the few things she did well. She's trying. I mean, the whole time they're saying, did she have enough time? Her plan was to do what Joe Biden did and win it from a basement and let the media do all the talking. But Trump and J.D. vance just kept pointing out, it's X number of days. She hasn't done a press conference or an interview. It's X number, you know, like, over and over. So she had to start doing them. And when she started, they were horrible.

I mean, she needed a whole day to prepare for one on a friendly network. And, like, it was so clearly biased that now the reporters have to save face, have to make it look like they're actually asking hard questions or general questions. And she did such a bad job at answering. It's like, no, we got to get you on again. And yet she would constantly give the same bad answers. And so she finally is coming up with a positive message, because, you know, her message was always, Trump. Trump. Trump.

Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. I mean, that's basically her entire message. She came of unifying the country. And the day she does that, within hours, there's Joe Biden calling all of Trump's supporters garbage. Yep. Yep. Don't tell me he's not bitter. The rumor is that she was seeing some intern. I mean, the polling was pretty even all the way up to the bitter end.

The rumor is that she was seeing some internals that were really getting concerning, and that's why she pivoted from a. Trump is a. Whatever race. He's Hitler. Homophobe insert. Yeah, yeah, basically, he's. He's more Hitler than Hitler. He's mega Hitler and all that, too. Lots of Maga Hitler. He must be a MAGA Hitler. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Make America Germany again. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. So. So she.

Her final sort of appeal, you know, the night before the election or whatever. It was, people were pointing out she didn't mention Trump once because she was all about like happiness and unity and all. What I've heard, and again, this is literally the source is some folks on Twitter. So take this for exactly how much it's worth is that they started panicking in the final days of her campaign.

And the old guard Obama people, the Obama 08 and the Obama 2012 people that were all about the hope and change messaging swept in the get out the vote, especially in the swing states in Pennsylvania specifically, actually the Obama team, the old school Obama team, took over and really goose the turnout and all. And that's why in the swing states, Trump, I mean Trump won convincingly the electoral College and in the popular vote. But in the swing states, it was still a close election.

Yeah. I mean Pennsylvania is going to end up being what, 5,149 somewhere around there at the presidential level. So the only reason it wasn't a five or eight point wipeout is because in the last second they tried to pivot more to a, to more seasoned political operatives, but it didn't work. It wasn't, it didn't. Well, it didn't work because Joe Biden sabotaged it. Which, you know, is quite interesting. In, in now that we have, we are looking past it.

But so I mean the thing we really want to focus on is as much as people focus presidential whatnot. I, I'm, I'm with you. We got to focus on, you know, the people Trump is going to be able to put in office now that he has the Senate. And this is things for people to understand. The Senate is important for all of the, his, his selections. When, when Trump, his first term, he couldn't get people slight. He could not get selections for the, all the judges around the country.

Yep. I do find it interesting because Barack Obama came in and fired every single judge across the land. Attorneys. Well, the people he could, he could. Yeah, yeah. Everyone he had executive power to. He can't fire judges, but he can fire attorneys. Yeah. And so he, he did that across the land. Every single one that not just the ones Bush put in, all of them and then put his own people in.

So when Trump came in and did the same thing, oh, then it was like racism and you know, he's, he's a dictator and all this. But then the Senate, he couldn't get a lot of them approved. And so we had a lot of court cases that were backing up because we couldn't get approval on these things. And then he started waiting until the little thing that they have where if there's a three day, if the Senate's out for three days, he can appoint them in an emergency order. So he ended up doing that.

Recess appointments. Correct. So now he can get those in. So now he can actually start doing some things. The House will be important for the, you know, being able to get the money. But one of the things that we're focusing on here on this is the propositions because this is what everyone ignores. These propositions are important because this is, this is whether for good or bad how the elections, how they affect different states.

You, you know, are you, are you in favor of statewide propositions? Absolutely not. I think they're one of the worst possible things. And if I could remove them from the constitutions of all 50 states, I would do it immediately. Absolutely. And I knew the answer ahead of time because you mentioned that on Keith's program. So. Yeah. And well, you look at the United States Constitution, it is not subject to a popular vote for amendment.

It's both houses of the Congress have to pass something by a two thirds majority and then three quarters of the state legislatures have to pass it. And that was done intentionally. It's supposed to be a pain in the rear to amend the Constitution. You don't want to do that quickly or flippantly. And so citizen initiatives in the states that can mess with their Constitutions. Absolutely not. I think it's a horrible idea.

And it is something, though, that the left has used to try to slip things in to get what they want. When they can't get it, they don't, they don't want to have to put it up for a vote amongst themselves because they, A, they, the vote could go against them and B, they don't want to have to go run on reelection on the votes that they did.

So they'd rather put it before the people and make it worded in such a way that people are think they're voting for one thing and they're actually voting for the other. Yeah. You know, they're voting for health care rights of women. Yeah. Bingo. Yeah. Instead of murder of unborn children. I've called it this before. It's would you vote for the Orphan Puppies and Veterans Protection Act?

You know, and it gives $10 to orphan puppies, $10 to veterans, and $17 billion is sent overseas to unaccountable countries. No. Why are you against orphan puppies and veterans? You know, like that kind of stuff. That's the kind of thing you get on these ballot initiatives sometimes. And Mob rules a bad thing. Okay. Mob rule will cause problems and our Founders knew that.

And that's why we have both a House which is elected by proportional representation and then we have a Senate which was specifically designed to be undemocratic. Yes. It is not designed to be democratic. It is designed to represent the interests of the state as a political entity. And so no, the Senate is not, the United States Senate is not proportionally representative and it's not supposed to be.

So direct democracy in many cases is a really, really bad idea because people are emotional, people can be whipped up into a frenzy and we just need to stop and think and actually allow some time before we, we make a knee jerk reaction to stuff.

Now sometimes those guardrails don't hold and you end up getting something like the Patriot act, you know, right after 9, 11, which ended up being used by an all powerful state to spy on whoever it wanted to that made it through Congress and was signed by the President. Right. So all the safeguards didn't hold that one away. But more often than not they keep a lot of bad ideas out of, out of the law books.

You know, when you read the early founding fathers of this country and I think most listen of the listeners, I'm going to ask you guys a question to think about.

Why is what, why is it that the founding fathers had set up two years for the House of Representatives and everyone gets re voted in every two years and six years for the Senate. Well, the founders explain this. Their intent was that the, the Representatives, House of Representatives were to be the common people, farmers that couldn't be away from their jobs for two years, for more than two years.

So the idea is they would come, they would serve their country in a short stint, they would have two years, then they get back to their job. And the Senate was supposed to be the more, shall we say educated if we want to use the terms we use nowadays. The House of Representatives would be the blue collar and the Senate would be the white collar if you want to use those terms. But that's the thinking that the, the Representatives control the purse. Why?

Because they're the people who are working the farms, working the lands, having the jobs that they don't have a lot of money. So they're going to have a tighter view of money. And then you had the Senate where they're going to be there longer, have a little bit of a longer view of things, but they're going to be the more educated, they're going to be the ones to appoint the positions of that are established where they're going to look more long term. That is what the founders had designed.

The founders never had a plan for someone being in the House of Representatives for decades or in the Senate for decades. Joe Biden has had 60 years. 60. That's not what the founders had planned. They thought you would do one term and leave maybe two. And so there. They didn't think people would make a career out of this. This was something that would be all. Should they come to Washington or. Well, New York at first, but they come to. I just said that offhandedly.

But for those that didn't pick that up, Matthew, I saw you nod your head, so you got it. But our capital was first in New York before it was moved to Washington D.C. so the reality is that they didn't have a plan. They didn't have a plan for that. They'd stay in D.C. the president stayed in D.C. and the vice President, but the rest came in for vote a few times a year. And it would be only a few times a year because remember, when you're coming in by horse, it takes months. A crazy thing.

This always stuck with me. John Adams, the second president, he found out that his son had died three months after the funeral because that's how long it took the message to get down to him from, you know, from Massachusetts down to, to D.C. think about that, folks. And so these guys would come in a few times a year, get all the voting done and then return home. Yep. Because it would take a long time to get, to get there. That's the way it was designed.

It was never designed that you move into D.C. and all the lobbyists are there and pushing these, these things. I would say we should go back to that. I would say that we should have a limit on how much time they can be in D.C. and this seem, that may seem strange, like, what's the big deal?

Well, because all the lobbyists are in D.C. having everyone in Congress in one place makes it easy for the lobbyists to just meet with multiple representatives or senators at one time, pushing agendas like abortion, where if they had to go to every state to push it, they would actually have to get statewide approval. Yeah. And that's what I really think should be. So this would affect things like Prop number four there in Florida. It would have been a lot harder to even get that on a ballot.

Yeah. So in Florida amendment, for any constitutional amendment to the Florida Constitution, there's two ways. Okay. There's technically three, but we're not going to talk about the Third one, there are two ways that an amendment can show up on the ballot. The first is that it is passed by a 60% majority in both houses of the Legislature, the Florida State House and the Florida State Senate.

After that's done, it is reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court to make sure that the ballot language is not confusing or misleading and that it follows something called the single subject rule. Then it is placed on the ballot for the next general election, either the next even year election. Really the other way, which is how these, how Amendment 4 and Amendment 3 made it onto the ballot. Three was for marijuana legalization. It failed as well.

The way that they do it is you have to get signatures from 8% of the voters who voted in the previous presidential election, or a number equivalent to that. So we had, it was 10,700,000 people vote in Florida this time. Let's just call it 10 million for easy math. You would need to get 800,000 signatures. If you wanted to put an amendment on the ballot for 2026, you need to get 800,000 signatures between now and February of 2026. That's how it works in Florida.

And if you do, and the Secretary of State says these signatures are valid, then you have to go defend it to the Florida Supreme Court, same rules. And then if they approve it, then it goes on to the ballot. Which is, which is what happened here. I have been following Amendment four, watching the progress reported by these, these Soros NGO type organizations as they're reporting more and more signatures.

And I watched when it went to the Florida Supreme Court, I watched the oral arguments, I watched the, the representative of the, of the Attorney General who was there to argue against it going onto the ballot because they said that Amendment 4 was deceptively worded. And in just my opinion, and again, I'm no lawyer, but I have watched a lot of Supreme Court oral arguments, the counsel for the state, face planted, utterly, utterly face planted.

And the final ruling was 4 to 3 in favor of putting it on the ballot. I really think the oral arguments blew it up there. I think that had the counsel for the Attorney General been a little more competent and made a slightly better argument that we would never have even seen it on our ballot. But we got it. And back in May I said, okay, it's coming, time to get ready. This is the thing, folks. We can't be asleep at the wheel when it comes to the elections.

We can't just say, well, I did my job, I voted. You know, we have to be active in this. Now. First off, if you are going to be asleep at the wheel, then may I suggest that you go out and get a good pillow if you're going to at least be asleep. Go, go to mypillow.com and get yourself a good pillow for a good night's sleep. Use the promo code SFE it lets them know you heard about them here and that way they will continue to support us here at Striving for Eternity.

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So use the promo code sfe. So Matthew, we, we see that you were very active in this. Explain some of the things that you were involved with because I want people not to be asleep at the wheel. I want people to realize that some of this starts way earlier, not just on election day where you go in and vote. What were some of the things you were doing from the very beginning? When did you start to look at how to defeat Prop Number four?

Mm so this first, I mean this first started really with Dobbs back in June of 2022.

That was the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue to the states to figure this out. And Florida at the time had a 15 week abortion law on the books or it was right around concurrently with that banning abortions after 15 weeks and then later that was upgraded to a six week ban. A heartbeat bill if you will. And I know there are multitudinous of my friends in the more hardcore abolitionist movement that would have issues with both of those bills.

I understand that. I respect them. Not going to get into that right now. Just wanting to say that this is what the situation is and was in Florida. Ohio had a vote in November, I believe, of 2023. It was right at a year ago in which they approved effectively what Amendment 4 is and I believe about by the same margin, about 57% and their simple majority to put something into their constitution.

At that point, I started thinking, if it can happen in Ohio, a state that Donald Trump won by 8, 9 points, something like that, and they won, air quote, their abortion amendment by seven points. That's a 15 point, you know, inverse from Trump's margin. And we'll get into why that matters in a little bit. I started saying, guys, heads up, they're going to be coming for Florida with this. And the people that were gathering signatures had already begun.

And that's when I first, that's when I first opened my eyes, was one year ago today. And I said, they're coming. And I found out that they had already gotten about 500,000 of their signatures. I was keeping an eye on that. I just became an elder in the church a year ago. It was in November actually of last year. So that was all happening concurrently. And I started speaking with my own elders. Well, all of my own elders are 30 years older than me.

The other elders are, I am definitely the youngest one in there at 30 myself. So I didn't want to come in and immediately started, start spitting fire and be like, we have to do this and we have to do that. Because our church had never really been politically active in any way. Just sort of, we don't preach politics, let's just give them the gospel kind of an idea. And but the elders, the other elders were very respectful of the fact that this is something I was passionate about.

And they gave me as much Runway as I needed to try and do something about it. So as I said, I watched the oral arguments going on and I watched the briefs and everything going on regarding Amendment 4 in April, May. And because they hit their signature threshold, the last hurdle for them to get it on the ballot was they needed the Supreme Court to sign off on it. And then when the Supreme Court gave their ruling, they gave a double ruling.

The first one they said was the six week ban may go into effect because there had been prior state level precedent that said the Florida Constitution allows abortion under some vague privacy. Right. And our current state Supreme Court said, no, it doesn't, which was good. But Then they also permitted this ballot measure to go to the, to the voters, which to me was kind of splitting the baby.

It was kind of washing their hands of it, saying, yeah, we'll allow it, but also, we're just going to let, we're going to let the voters decide, man. And so they did. I, I'll go ahead and say this may get me in trouble. That's okay. I, once that came down throughout May, June and July, I contacted a number of national organizations. And I'm not going to name names because that's not the point of what we're doing here.

Let me just say several on the more traditional pro life side of things and many on the more immediate abolitionist side of things. And if you're involved in any of this and you've seen documentaries put out by various churches and organizations that are criticizing the pro life side for being too incrementalist or they don't really care about abolishing abortions, I went to the people who were putting out those documentaries.

I said, okay, the pro life side, they're terrible at fighting these fights. Let's fight it from an abolitionist perspective. We need your help in Florida. And I received radio silence in return. None of them wanted to help. And we were begging them via email, via Facebook, messages, via Twitter, any way we could get in contact with them and said, listen, we're political novices, we're Christians. As a leader in the church, we want to marshal our people.

And is it door knocking, is it phone calling, is it canvassing? We don't know what works. How do we fight this? And we were completely ignored by both the more establishmentarian pro life types as well as the newer ones that are much more abolitionist. And again, I could give you some examples. I don't want to name names. I don't think that's useful. Yeah, we don't have to do that. But, but it is the point that there are people that unfortunately are established.

They say they're fighting something, but they really want to keep it going because their, their organization and their platform goes away if whatever they're fighting disappears. I, I under, I hear that criticism and I, I understand that. I, I will just say I have a visceral reaction against people who. Roe v. Wade stood as the law of the land for 50 years, or most would say it was a garbage Supreme Court decision, which it was, it was, on a legal level. It was a complete fantasy of any kind of.

Yeah, anyway, but we, we got rid of it. We took it down. It's, it doesn't exist anymore. And there are more options available to those of us who want to see the scourge of abortion removed from our land. There are more options available to us now because of that. And yet I have, I have spoken face to face with people who said it would have been better if we had never gotten Dobbs. Dobbs was worse than Roe. And I'm sorry, I understand that you want to be incredibly a purist on this issue.

I respect the passion. I'm not throwing you out of the kingdom. I'm not saying I won't fight Amendment 4 with you, but that kind of thinking is just incredible to me. It really, really is. Listen, there are plenty of squishy pro lifers that are fine with 12 week, 6 week, 15 week, whatever, and once they get there, they're good, you know, and they'll make a big song and dance. But then when it really matters, they'll get in there and torpedo anything better than that. I agree.

I believe they're out there. But for the rest of us that want to see abortion abolished and are willing to make tactical moves over time to get there, the more hardcore, immediate abolitionist people want nothing to do with us, sadly, which is really unfortunate because I think joining forces, we could do a lot of damage to these abortion laws and amendments and that sort of thing and make some real progress. So as we close up, I mean, why, why did I want you on? Why did. To do this show?

Because of this very simple reason. I think a lot of Christians, even many of you in this audience, feel that your, your duty was done with the election, as if now there's nothing to do. Well, I have a different view of this. Yes, we may have gotten a reprieve on the Marxist agenda for four years at least. I, I'm hoping it's 12 years, but we have at least four years. But it's just a reprieve. The Marxists are not saying, oh, we lost, we give up, that's it, it's over.

No, you know, all the work we did to get this reprieve, now the real work begins. We need to have our voice heard even more. Think back to 2016, when people were getting beaten up for wearing a MAGA hat, when people felt that, you know, ever since Barack Obama, you couldn't talk in the workplace about your political views if you were conservative, if you're a liberal, you could do it all day long. That is starting to change. But we have to now speak.

We now have to be using it because we, the real thing, we want to use it for is the sharing of the gospel. Because these Marxists see no difference between defeating Christianity and defeat as their enemy and defeating Republicans. They see that they have to take out Christianity. And so now is the time to work even harder so that we have freedoms to share the gospel in America. It's not time to sit back and say we're done.

It's not time to say, okay, hey, we got, we had the Dobbs Amendment, now it's the state level, okay? Now we have to fight at the state level and we have to get it, we have to get this overturned at a state level. So I'm challenging people to say, let's not give up, let's continue and work even harder now because the socialists, the Marxists, they're continuing, they're not stopping, they're not going, okay, we lost, we're done. They're working even harder. And this is the issue that.

Let me just say this to soften a little bit of what I said earlier. There was a gentleman came down from North Carolina specifically, took vacation time, specifically in the final week before the election to fight Amendment 4. I believe he's with Abolitionist Rising, which again is more of that immediateist abolitionist type of group. And I do want to say, John, if you're listening, it was great to work with you. And he and I were texting earlier today. No bad blood or anything like that.

The point I was making earlier though is that trying to get engaged earlier on was a real challenge for us. And the anti abortion side, whether you would say pro life, abolitionist, whatever, has a lot of work to do in organizing.

This was not a clean fight in the sense that there were so many disparate groups fighting against this. The yes on 4 campaigns had $150 million to work with, provided by a dark money Soros group that was internationally funded. It wasn't even out of state, it was out of the country where this money was coming from. The no on 4 had 6 million, 150 versus 6. And a lot of that 6 million came from the leftovers of the reelection campaign for Governor DeSantis.

He grabbed this issue, poured every dime he had into it and said basically you could be forgiven for thinking that we didn't have a governor for the last six weeks because all he was doing was going around fighting this Amendment three. And he won. And I'm glad he did it and I'm proud of him. But as Christians, we need to be getting involved earlier in this. And how do we do that? That was kind of what you were getting at is how do we get around to doing that?

The first thing is in your churches, do not assume that everyone who comes and claims the name of Christ has a proper understanding of abortion. I would be willing to say, having taught on this, having engaged in audience questions on it and all that. And also looking at the voting return data, one third of Republicans voted in favor of Amendment 4. A third of them said, yes, we want unlimited abortion up until birth. That's a mission field church.

We can't just say, oh, they've got an R after their name. They're good. No, absolutely not. Not only may they not be Christian, but they may have no clue what's going on with this kind of stuff and have a very libertarian, oh, I don't want to get involved in people's business kind of idea. We can't. We can't do that. So don't necessarily, I mean, preach the gospel. Any opportunity you get.

Don't think you have to go into a Biden or a Kamala plus 90 district and start street preaching against abortion. Start with the members of your own church. Because even if they're all Republicans, statistically a third of them voted yes on this. So judgment begins in the house of God. And we've got some work to do there first before we start going into any kind of, you know, larger organizing kind of thing.

But what I would also say is these issues need to pervade the preaching and teaching of your church. No, you should not be preaching on politics every Sunday. No, you should not be preaching necessary necessarily on abortion every Sunday. But there should be absolutely no question where your church stands on this issue.

And if evangelical Christians had organized and activated like the Roman Catholic Church did here in Florida, which I'm a proud Protestant elder who celebrated Reformation Day and my bona fides are out there.

But I will tell you, the various diocese and organizations of the Roman Catholics down in Florida marshaled against this thing. And so we praise God for that while we still continue to evangelize them. But that kind of organization is something we really, really lack. So I would find organizations that are committed to, and I don't have one to plug for you tonight, committed to the same kind of view that you have on abortion.

Figure out how you can partner with them, not necessarily just throw money at them. But look, the Florida Democrat Party was already saying, we're gathering, we are registering voters today. They said we lost, we took it on the chin. But we're going to wake up and go back to it. And they're Registering voters on college campuses. I think we should take a victory lap for a week and then we need to get right back to work and we need to start figuring out how we're going to fight back against this.

I think you're right. And you know, I thank you for coming on. I'll just. My closing comments would be this. The Marxists have a long term agenda. When did this agenda start in America? With John Dewey. John Dewey came to America with the plan to bring the Marxist agenda here and he had a long term plan. They're working.

So when, when so many of the abolitionists and others couldn't vote for Trump because they got to vote their conscience, by the way, the vote, the conscience is a mark that comes from the Marxists. If they couldn't get you to be Christian for Harris, they wanted you to vote your conscience. So you just didn't vote. So you split the vote. And the reality is I am all for voting your conscience, but we have to have a long term plan.

We can't just go into every election saying, I'm going to vote my conscience because both parties are bad. Yeah, both parties are bad. Every party is bad because they're made up of human beings that are sinners. But you can't just say we're going to just do this without a long term plan. This isn't going to change overnight. The Marxists have a long term plan and they almost, I mean, it's amazing how close they almost came to completing their plan in this election and was stopped.

But they're not going to stop trying. They're going to continue on. And therefore we need to continue the fight to proclaim the truth of God's word and promote freedom and life around this country. So we have to have a long term plan. You know, Trump may not be the best possible candidate, but he's the best that we had. And we need to start raising up Christians that, that will go into political office and be willing to, to sacrifice that.

As you know, I just, I'll have the interview coming up with Dusty Devers, who is in the state, in Oklahoma City and he ran on an abolitionist, you know, platform. So we can do it. Very fun interview. You'll get to hear it. So, Matthew, I want to, I want to thank you for coming on. Let folks know anything that you would like them to know if you want, anything you want to promote or how they can get a hold of you if they want to get into the fight and the battle.

Sure. So obviously in other states you should, you should first, start in your own church. We love out of state support. We love support across the state. But I started in my own church. I began preaching and teaching on this as and when I had opportunity to. And so that's what I would start doing first. I'm an elder at Switzerland Community Church. Our church of course did not endorse a political candidate, but we fiercely opposed him in for and so I have no problem saying that.

You can find us@switzerlandcc.org I don't have a media platform or anything like that or a website. I'm just a guy that was really upset that this was about to happen to my state and I just rolled up my sleeves and got to work. So yeah, if you're out there, drop me a line. You can find my email address on the website up there and I'd be happy to talk with you about what happened and where, where we go from here. Well, Matthew, thank you for coming on.

I hope that some of your story and what you did will inspire others to say that they need to get involved in their church and in their local level to put an end to this travesty of abortion. So I appreciate you coming on. It was really great to to get to know you on Keith's program. Talk to you more here. It was a lot of fun and I hope that we could would do some more work together for the Kingdom of God. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And folks, that's a wrap.

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