So President Trump issued his much ballyhooed statement on where he is on the abortion issue. And I'm sure I'm the last person to talk about it over the course of you know, there's thirteen straight hours of talk radio here, But as director Right to Life es Central California, I feel like I kind of have to talk about it. There's a number of things about this that are let me just give the top line assessment here. I thought it was wildly
inadequate. The number of times he said that people have to listen to their heart, frankly made me want to vomit. You got to listen to your heart on he almost takes the attitude that he is a uninvolved bystander on the issue. There was almost nothing about actual policies he supports, he doesn't support, administrative actions he will or won't support, Like if you're going to make some big I'm the candidate that I need the votes of all the pro lifers
you gotta give. It was the most non policy laden alleged policy statement in the history of mankind. There's all kinds of stuff that even he did in his first administration, or at least that his administration did, that I would bet dollars to donuts. He doesn't actually remember because it was a bunch of administrative stuff that he didn't necessarily care about very much. There's all kinds of regulatory stuff that a new presidential administration can do that has a major impact on
abortion. Are you going to promote policies to allow people to purchase insurance plans that don't cover abortion in states like California? Are you going to what are you going to do about the FDA regulation of the abortion pill. That's a huge issue right now. It's already in front of the US Supreme Court. The Biden administration massively deregulated the abortion pill. You could come in and do
something about that. There are a million and one things that the Trump administration could do on the question of abortion, and he he took the opportunity of this statement to clarify nothing. The only thing he took any time to talk about was IVF. Now, I recognize I'm in the minority on the question of IVF. I think IVF is seriously. I think IVF while the people who make use of it are often motivated by heartbreaking conditions of infertility, and
I'm not judging those individual people. The fact of the matter remains that during IVF there is in America because the IVF industry is pretty much completely unregulated or certainly far less regulated than it is in Europe, certainly far less regulated than it is in There's some American states that regulated a little better, like Louisiana.
IVF involves creating far more embryos than can ever possibly come to term, and so you have this horrific situation of millions of embryos being created who either have to be indefinitely kept in frozen storage or who are destroyed. So Trump talks on and on about IVF because of why. About a month and a half ago, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a decision that basically all it said was, Yes, if you negligently destroy IVF embryos, parents can sue over
it. That's all it said. It was a case that the Alabama State Supreme Court was assessing that was looking at a guy had wandered into the back of an IVF clinic had dropped a petri dish or some container with a bunch
of IVF embryos and destroyed the embryos. The parents of those embryos sued the IVF clinic, saying that was basically a They sued the IVF clinic under Alabama's wrongful Death Statute, which Alabama's wrongful Death Statute has allowed people to file civil lawsuits for not just the deaths of live, walking around people, but also
children in the womb. So the Alabama Supreme Court said, well, if we allow people to sue under this wrongful death statute for negligent conduct that results in the death of an embryo who's inside a mother's womb, why wouldn't we allow people to sue for the death of an embryo that's outside of a mother's womb. That's all it was. It was the Alabama State Supreme Court saying, hey, IVF clinics, you are subject to the same kinds of negligence.
You know, not behaving as a reasonably prudent person should, not engaging in negligence, not allowing random, unsecure people to wander into the back of your clinic and destroy embryos. You are subject to those kinds of standards of conduct. It had nothing to do with the overturning of Rob Waite, It had nothing to do with abortion policy. But because the Alabama Supreme Court said that, And by the way, it's the Alabama State Supreme Court, not
a federal court, not the Supreme Court, the Alabama Supreme Court. It's a court whose only area of jurisdiction is over Alabama law. It has no impact even on Mississippi law. Because that happened, all these Republicans, because IVF has massive mainstream popularity, All these Republicans ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, terrified at the idea that whole Democrats will use this to slam us. For me, if if Democrats see this, they'll they'll say
that we're anti IVF. So we got to make sure that we show that we're super pro IVF. So what happens, Well, the Alabama state Legislature, which Trump effusively praises in this statement, Today, the Alabama State Legislature passes a law that grants almost complete immunity from lawsuits to the IVF industry, which is like, why shouldn't they be subject to a lawsuit if they behave
negligently and destroy embryos that parents want to keep. This is insane. Now, So Trump spends all this time in this statement talking about IVF, a procedure that is nowhere at risk in the United States of America. I should add that no Republican has proposed limiting that. In fact, Republics have disgustingly
and obsequiously bent over backwards to pledge allegiance to it. Over the last month and a half, he goes on and on about wanting to protect IVF in all fifty states, but then on the whole question of abortion, he just seems to take the posture of, Hey, well, every state's gonna do what they're gonna do. Every state's gonna do what they're gonna do, and you gotta vote the way you want to vote on it. Just follow your heart, got to do what's right for your family. You do you.
And he gives this attitude again as if he's basically decided I'm out, I'm I'm out of this question. I am a bystander to the question of abortion. Not one word about These are the executive policies my administration will pursue about a border. We will have no overseas funding of abortion. Will we will reinstate the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits federal funding for foreign and g o's
to perform abortions. We will look into roll back the FDA's deregulation of the abortion pill, which is which, by the way, is the singular thing that would have the biggest impact on abortion, is relooking at the FDA's regulation of the abortion pill. That is the one single thing that would actually have an impact. The thing about his statement, though, that I that I find, I guess the most troubling. Whether there are two things I find
troubling. One is the idea that he is doing some brilliant political strategicy. And this is the thing I sort of of dislike about the Trump orbit, the Trump universe. Trump says what he says, Okay, The problem is that there's this universe of Trump sycophancy that demands that you have to pledge allegiance to the greatness of every single thought that has ever come out of Donald Trump's head. And all these people on Twitter, all these Trump sycophants, are
like, oh, the President Trump's doing the smart thing here. He's making sure that Democrats can't use abortion as an issue to pound us with way to go Donald Trump, Oh this is brilliant. He's having these reasonable exceptions to abortion, like rape and incest. They're acting as if Donald Trump has like, you know, he's cracked the genetic code, that he's you know, solved some grand equation that no one else has ever solved. He is doing
the same exact thing that Republican presidential candidates have done for forty years. He is compromising on the abortion question in this way and that way, and this way and that way for the sake of winning an election. Let's not pretend like Mitt Romney wouldn't be doing the exact same thing right now. Let's not pretend like George W. Bush wouldn't be doing the exact same thing right now. Let's not pretend like so many other Republican politicians wouldn't George H. W.
Bush wouldn't have done the exact same thing right now. This is not some grand, unheard of political strategicy. He's doing the exact same thing. And this is the problem with Trump, all right, the problem with Trump when it comes to the abortion issue. Trump was until twenty twelve, when he was sixty five years old. Donald Trump was a pro choice person until the age of sixty five, at which point he started wanting to run as a run for president as a Republican, and then all of a sudden,
he changed his political position on abortion at the age of sixty five. Now, I don't know about you, and I'm not saying it's impossible, and I would welcome any prodigal son who returns at the age of sixty five. Not a lot of people have massive ideological, massive deep seated ideological changes at the age of sixty five. It just doesn't happen very often, especially when that ideological change is perfectly timed for one's political ambitions. You can't be a
Republican president if you're pro choice. That's a bridge too far for the Republican electorate. So Donald Trump snaps his fingers and all of a sudden, he's pro life. So this is the problem is that I don't know that Donald Trump views this issue very sincerely. I don't think he actually cares about this topic all that much. He knows it's important to a big segment of the electorate, and he delivered on three Supreme Court justices willing to overturn Roev Wade
very good, but he doesn't really care about it. And as a result, the outside of him his judicial appointments, which frankly, he just kind of farmed out to the Federalist Society, which didn't exactly have a perfect batting average outside of his judicial pick. His judicial picks were largely really really good
because he completely farmed it out to the Federalist Society. Outside of that, though, his enactment of pro life policies through the administration, through the regulatory regime that he actually has control over through his administration, it was spotty.
He enacted the Mexico City Policy and put in place a great Title ten policy to stop funding planned parenthood, but kept allowing Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins to fund federal research for embryo destructive stem cell research and even to fund federal research on the body parts of a boarded feet up until pro lifers raised such a stink about it that he changed it about two or three, about three years into his four year term. So that's what I'm saying is he doesn't really
care about the abortion issue. He wants it to go away, and so he's almost acting like mat Web now because it's at the states. You got to follow your heart, and that's always going to be weaker than the Democrat position. Abortion should be legal. Abortion should be legal for all nine months of pregnancy for any reason. It should be federally funded and people should have
universal access to it. That's the Democrat position nationwide, all nine months, any reason, and we're going to respond to it with this wishy washy flailing around. When we return, I want to talk about this idea that there's some other thing, apparently, some other thing that we have to get to,
that abortion is just a distraction from. That's next. On the John Girardi Show, President Trump had a video statement released along with a written statement that he released on Truth Social about abortion that everyone's sort of dissecting today and my end assessment of it is wildly inadequate. Doesn't actually say what his position is anymore. All he says is, well, every state has to vote
on it the way they think. You gotta follow your heart on this thing, which is like the biggest like like he's standing on the sidelines, like he's not an integral player. Like the relevant questions are, what will you do if your presidency comes in? Are there is there legislation you would sign? Is there are there executive orders you would make? Is there regulatory changes you would enact? No? None of that. All he talks about is
that we we have to win elections. We have to win elections because our country's on the edge of failure, so he says in his written statement, great love and compassion must be shown when even thinking about the subject of life. But at the same time, we must use common sense in realizing that we have an obligation to the salvation of our nation, which is currently in serious decline, to win elections, without which we will have nothing other than
failure, death, and destruction. We need to save our nation by compromising a bunch on abortion. All right, let me just make this clear. There's not some other issue that's more important. That abortion is something that we deal with on the road to that we need to compromise on abortion so that we can win the election and save the nation. Save the nation from what? What is more important for saving the nation from? There's nothing that's more
important. Guys, do you understand how many abortions happen in a year? A million last year are the best estimates that we have, and the numbers are always fuzzy because California doesn't report its abortion statistics. So that's a massive gaping hole in our knowledge and understanding. But people are still able to do you know estimates and assessments. The assessment was that in twenty twenty three,
one million abortions happened one zero zero zero zero zero zero a million. Just fathom if you can, the tidal wave of human suffering that's accompanying that. A million children who don't get to see the light of day, a million. You know, we know that at least seventy percent of abortions are against the preference of the mother who's having them. So hundreds of thousands of women suffering and sorrowing over an abortion they didn't want to have but felt compelled to
because of finances or this or that. Every year, another million, another eight hundred thousand, another nine hundred thousand, and you know what's a lot of what's driving it. By the way, federal executive policy, the Biden administration changing the rules for access to the abortion pill, which, by the way, I'm not talking about the morning after pill. I'm talking about the abortion pill. These are pills to bring about an abortion up to ten weeks
in to a pregnancy. Okay, this is the most common way that abortions happen nowadays. Most of the time it's not happening via surgery. It's a pill that you can take up to ten weeks into a pregnancy that basically artificially recreates a miscarriage up to ten weeks. A lot more health roast associated with
it than surgical abortion. But what happened. The Biden administration altered the FDA regulation around this pill so that it could be shipped through the mail or picked up at a major pharmacy, and all of a sudden, as soon as he does that, boom abortion numbers skyrocket. That's something that a new pro life president could stop, could reverse. But does Trump talk about that. No, he doesn't talk about that at all. He doesn't talk about any
of the stuff he actually can do. He acts again, he acts like he is a sideline spectator to this, that there's some thing and that, oh, well, we got to just win this election because our national salvation is at stake. This is our national salvation being at stake. A million people being unjustly killed in a year. That's more important than anything else.
I think the immigration problem is serious, I admit freely, openly. I'm not like I'm constrained not to. I think it's a terrible thing that we have gazillions of people that we have millions of people coming into the country sidestepping the normal immigration laws to come into the country in this way. I don't think that's a good thing. I think there's all kinds of problems with national sovereignty and all kinds of problems that that involves. It's not as bad as
a million people being murdered in a year. It just isn't. There is nothing that can be worse than that. Like this is like being in Germany in nineteen forty and thinking that the well, we you know, this this problem that they're having with the Jews, you know, we gotta we gotta like compromise on that so we can filk focus on the real problem, which is, geez, this economy we're facing. What are we gonna say for the futures for German children? Like, who gives a crap about anything else?
As long as that issue isn't being resolved, I just cannot Look. Obviously, I'm way more pro life than Trump is, and probably the electorate is far less pro life than I am. But I think those of us in the base have to do what we can to hold him accountable. And if he's not, I mean, he's just kind of a band. He's he is acting like he is a spectator to this. This was the biggest nothing burger statement in human history. He doesn't say anything that he's actually going
to do. I mean, it's wild, unsatisfying. And look, you guys, if you listen to this show, you know me, I call balls and strikes with Donald Trump. If he does something good, I say he does something good. If he does something bad, I say he does something bad. If he's you know, with all of his myriad lawsuits, I play it pretty straight, and I've said where you know, I think most of them against him have been bogus. But this this was woefully inadequate,
woefully disappointing. When we return, I just because this Trump thing on abortion is making it I think the news of the day. I want to talk about the state of the abortion the anti abortion movement in the United States, where we are legally, and where we need to go. That's next
on The John Gerardy Show. To understand the context of Trump's comments today about abortion, I think I want to lay out what sort of the national landscape is with abortion right now legally, what the overturning of Row Acts did, and where we sort of stand with all these things, what kind of coherent federal policy Republicans need to have when it comes to abortion, Because I think there is a sense, a pretty strong sense among a lot of Republicans that
now that we've overturned Roby Wade, we're done, We're done, mission accomplished. I've heard basically Ann Coulter has adopted that position, and a lot of other Republicans who were sort of pretending to be super duper pro life have all of a sudden come out as not really pro life, not really caring about
the issue of abortion as such. All Right, So let me just describe what the pre twenty twenty two landscape was, what the pre DBS landscape was, what the Row landscape was, the Row landscape, just to remind you all, and maybe for some of you you had a vague sense of this but didn't clearly have a sense of it. What Roe v. Wade did and its successor case planned Parenta versus Casey, which was a Supreme Court case from nineteen ninety two. This was when Anthony Kennedy really stuck his foot into
our national abortion politics. It basically said that the Constitution of the United States, our foundational law in America mandated legal abortion for the whole duration of pregnancy and for any reason. Basically, it said, yes, you can limit abortion after viability unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's quote health. And the way that Another Supreme Court case from nineteen seventy three issued the same day as Row, called Dovers as Bolton. The way it interpreted health was so broad that
it encompassed essentially all abortions, all pregnancies. All pregnancies implicate maternal health,
and therefore all pregnancies could be banned could legally qualify for abortion. So in nineteen seventy three, when Roe was issued, we went overnight from having some of the most conservative abortion laws in the world, where most states had banned abortion except to save the mother's life, to overnight, in nineteen seventy three, every state had the most permissive laws about abortion possible, and states couldn't change their own laws about abortion. Why Well, because the Supreme Court said
the Constitution mandates legal abortion. If the Constitution mandates something, you can't pass an individual state law that contradicts it. It would be like California trying to pass a law that says, you know, the right to keep in bare arms shall be in fringe. Well, no, you can't pass a law like that, has to be consistent with the Second Amendment. So that's where we found ourselves. From nineteen seventy three to twenty twenty two, it was
this impossible position for pro lifers to actually bring about any meaningful change. All fifty states had legal abortion for the full term of pregnancy, all fifty states. All fifty states had legal abortion throughout pregnancy. What overturning Robi Wade did was simply allow states to pass laws to limit abortion at Maybe one state will limit abortion at twenty weeks out of a forty week presidency. Maybe this state
will limit abortion at sixteen weeks. Maybe this state of limited abortion at the first trimester, Maybe this state of limited abortion when fetal heartbeat can be detected. That is what over turning Roe v. Wade allowed. So it was
this necessary condition. Now what's been happening since twenty twenty two is that a bunch of states, the minute they have actual elections on the topic of abortion, a democratic process where people vote up or down on the abortion issue, what do we find, Well, we find that a lot of Republicans are not actually that pro life. So every single state where abortion has been discussed,
the pro life position has lost. Either the state has ratified some new legal protection for abortion through popular vote, or a limitation on abortion was defeated. And because of that, and there were losses like that in elections in Ohio which was disastrous, Kentucky, California, several other states, Republicans are now terrified of the abortion issue. And that's chiefly what Trump's statement, I
think is responding to. He's terrified of abortion. He thinks that if the election becomes an up and down referendum on abortion, is abortion good, then vote for Biden is abortion bad than vote for Trump. If that's all the election's about, Donald Trump knows he will lose, Okay, So as a result, Donald Trump is basically abandoning the field. He's running away. He's saying, well, everyone's got to vote the way they think about it.
Everyone's got to follow their heart. That's all He's literally he's expressed almost no actual concrete opinion on the question of abortion whatsoever in this statement. Now, just because the Supreme Court turned the question of abortion overdess basically said states can regulate abortion, it doesn't mean that the federal government can't regulate abortion. What Democrats are trying to do. What Joe Biden has pledged to do if he
gets enough Democrats in the Senate to get rid of the filibuster rule. This is what he's pledging to do. So remember how I described that Roe v. Wade basically imposed on all fifty states this standard that abortion has to be legal for the duration of pregnancy. It did that as a mandate of the Constitution. What Biden wants to do is pass a federal law, just a normal federal law, to mandate on all fifty states that abortion be legal.
So instead of having abortion be legal by a constitutional mandate, which is what we had in America from nineteen seventy three Roe v. Wade until twenty twenty two, does Biden wants to pass a federal law, a normal federal law passed by the House the Senate, signed by the President, that mandates legal abortion on all fifty states. That is what he wants, That is what he is committed to. That is a plank in the Democratic Party platform.
Biden has promised not only would he do it, he would even give up the filibuster rule in the Senate to do it, so basically, the Senate can change its filibuster rules. The philibuster rule in the Senate is basically, for most pieces of legislation in the Senate, you actually need sixty votes to advance it rather than just fifty. Right. It makes it very difficult. So basically, for almost any non budgetary thing, you need sixty votes in
the Senate to pass it rather than fifty. And this makes the Senate a kind of conservative body in the sense that it doesn't it's very hard to pass something in the Senate. Biden has pledged to abolish the philibuster rule for the sake of passing abortion legislation like this. He's also willing, seemingly to expand the Supreme Court in the same way pack the Supreme Court. The number of
justices on the Supreme Court is not set by the Constitution. Congress can pass a normal law, majority of the House, majority of the Senate, president signs it to expand the number of justices. If that happens, then the president appoints and the Senate confirms new justices. Democrats are very open about this idea of packing the Supreme Court to undo the Dobbs decision. So one way or another, Democrats have a strong committed position, this is what we're gonna
do. We're gonna make abortion legal without restrictions in all fifty states. The Republican response is Republicans have no freaking idea what they're doing. They are such weenies that they can't say some consistent position. They can't say, for example, if elected president, we have to do everything in our power to reregulate the abortion pill, because the deregulation of the abortion pill under President Biden puts women's health at risk but also has led to a massive increase in the number
of abortions. But no, we're not gonna say anything like that, And I think when we return, I want to talk about this. This is why I want a lawyer as president, because I don't think fundamentally Donald Trump, even quite still fully understands the ways in which he can impact abortion policy, or if he does, he just chooses not to talk about it. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I've often made the argument that I think only lawyers should be president. I think it's kind of bizarre that they
aren't. I think it's to elect a non lawyer as president. I think is as silly as electing a non lawyer to be the district attorney. Like, what is the district attorney to The district attorney basically is in charge of criminal law enforcement for a county. Right, That's what Lisa smith Kamp does. She's in charge of criminal law enforcement for the County of Fresno. There's some civil stuff, but for the most part, criminal law enforcement. We
would never dream of electing a non lawyer as DA. I mean, theoretically, anyone can run for DA. You know, there are plenty of people in the Greater Fresnel area I like very well. Like if Trevor Carrey decided, Hey, I'm gonna run for DA, I wouldn't vote for Trevor. I like Trevor quite a bit, but he's not a lawyer, Okay. I'd vote for a lawyer over Trevor. Trevors just doesn't have that qualification. That's okay. He's qualified to do a lot of other good things. Now.
Similarly, the president is in charge of all federal enforcement of the law, all of it. All of federal law, environmental law, health law, criminal law, securities law, antitrust law, everything, the whole body of law. Talking like Jerry Seinfeld for some reason, and yet for some reason, and including the regulatory state, which involves the president using the mechanisms at his disposal to affect his preferred policies within the parameters of laws passed by
Congress. I don't really think Donald Trump, in his statement on abortion, basically said no actual restriction. He enumerated, no actual restriction on abortion he supported, nor did he even mention the various good things even that his own administration did while he was in office to restrict. He didn't mention the Mexico City policy, didn't mention all these things that they did. And I just think that Trump to this day fundamentally has a hard time understanding his executive power
as president to change things. I don't think he necessarily fully understands it, and I think that's why a lot of stuff didn't happen while he was in office, why he wasn't able to ruthlessly maneuver the mechanisms of the executive state to accomplish what he wanted. Now I think there's been some recognition of that. I think he's pushing or his campaign surguits are pushing for giving him greater latitude to fire federal employees and replace them with his own chosen people. But
I this is the thing about it that that has always worried me. When you elect a non president to this role. This is fundamentally a legal enforcement job. And that's why, all things being equal, I mean, yeah, I'd rather elect a virtuous non lawyer than an evil lawyer, But all things being equal, I'd really wish, I really wish there is a lawyer running for this job. And I think it's why Democrats use the administrative state
so much better. They've had lawyers in the presidency for the last thirty years, unlike us. That'll do it for John Girardi Show. See you next time on Power Talk.