They Arrested And Strip Searched Me... - Lois McLatchie Miller

I was arrested for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever. Children are not born in the wrong body. Their immediate instinct was to call us fascists. And Chris asked, well, what about our free speech? We have a right to funeral speech here, don't we? And the police said, it doesn't work like that here. And we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours. Why were you strip searched?

If I get criminal charges, it will change my life quite substantially. It's quite a high cost for free speech. It's not good. It's not. It's not good at all. If you're like us, you believe that understanding how freedom actually works is one of the most important things a citizen can do. That's why I think many of you will find this fascinating. Hillsdale College has just released a brand new free online course on...

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Joyce McClatchy Miller, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to have you on. We wanted to have you on for a while, but particularly more recently because of an incident you were involved in. So you're someone who... campaigns on a number of issues, one of them being trans ideology. It's an issue we haven't talked about for quite some time, really, because initially

In the journey of trigonometry, we were just investigating it and kind of going like, you know, these trans women are real women. What does that mean? And how does it work? And all of that. And then I think it's fair to say over time, we came to what we thought was a pretty reasonable position on that. And over time...

The country came to, Britain at least, came to what is a pretty reasonable position on that. Outlawing puberty blockers, defining what a woman is, finally we know. Good, we've discovered that. And now we don't really talk very much about it because we sort of feel that it's been dealt with. But you had an incident recently which shows how much more there is going on around that and speech and so on. So tell us about your work and what happened.

for holding one of the most basic fundamental truths that we've known forever. Children are not born in the wrong body. And it's one of the most important messages of our day. And you're right to say that the UK has come a really long way. legally and politically on this issue. But I think sometimes we can just look at the news stories or our own Twitter feed and think that we have won and not realise what's going on up in the streets. And so my friend Billboard Chris, who is...

has been working on this for a long time. His methodology is to go out, to take the conversation outside and to meet people in their daily lives and to have a conversation about what's going on when it comes to the horrors of child transition and what we can do to keep children safe. So he does this all over the world. I joined him, I've joined him quite a few times and I joined him in Brussels about six weeks ago.

We've met, we've done this in woke cities before. We did it in Melbourne, Australia, one of the most famously woke cities of all. We were out in Geneva. Typically, even in these places, it's about nine to one support. you wouldn't know it, but a lot of people, they walk past, at least they give you a thumbs up, or normally it's a dad, the kind of middle-aged dads really kind of get on board with what we're saying, and either stop to...

give us our support vocally, or at least just make it known to you. But Brussels was the first time, and it was the first time for Chris also, that it actually beat four to one against. It was as if we'd gone into this vortex where, and if you think about Brussels, obviously a lot of people who go to Brussels go there because they want to be part of the EU. So it's a city of activists, a city of people with an agenda.

And I was about four to one against this message. I got the impression a lot of people had never even seen such a message. I think we're very lucky in the Anglosphere that we get quite a balanced media spectrum on this issue. From The Telegraph to The Guardian, they've got a range of opinion on things like purity blockers.

I got the impression that out there in Brussels, in the European media, they just had not been exposed to this kind of thinking before. They had not come across these arguments. And... Their immediate instinct was to call us fascists and to yell at us and to describe us as Nazis and the most horrible people in the world just because we wanted to keep children safe from puberty blockers.

So we started to get kind of a little bit of a crowd around us. A lot of them were shouting kind of shame on you, being very aggressive, saying, you know, I have a trans daughter and what you're doing is, you know. going to murder lots of people. And we're like, no, we're actually here to keep children safe. Let's talk about what's going on. Let's talk about the science behind this. Let's talk about how we can compassionately care for kids who have confusion.

As the crowd grew, there was two men, particularly who were being very aggressive to me, and they were middle-aged dads, kind of, you know, as a stereotype, but I don't know if they had children, but that was their... Normally... They were for us, but they started kind of getting in my face, trying to take me away from Chris, trying to mess with the equipment.

yelling at me and I didn't understand it all because it was in Dutch but I got the impression given some of the English swear words that were coming out that it probably wasn't the nicest thing that they were saying. And so eventually we had to call the police for our own safety. When the police arrived, they took a look at this scene with two people with signs and the recording equipment and this gathering mob shouting and yelling.

And their instinct was, of course, to arrest the two peaceful people and not the crowd who were yelling abuse. It was quite an interesting little 20, 30 minutes we had with the police. explaining what was going on. I showed them the cameras, they were just...

Talking to people, having conversations, and they're like, oh, you need a permit to protest. And I said, no, we're not protesting. We would have bought 50 people if we were protesting. Here's our equipment. Here's Bill Marcus on Twitter, showing him examples. And I said, you wouldn't need a...

a permit to have a conversation about the environment or about israel and gaza or any of these controversial issues so why do i need a permit to be here today and chris asked well what about our free speech we have a right to freedom of speech here don't we and the police said it doesn't work like that here which was, I want to think that he didn't speak English well enough to express that point.

But it was quite chilling to hear, oh, it doesn't work like that here in the heart of democracy, in the home of the EU, in Brussels, of all places. You do not get a claim to free speech. They tried to take our camera equipment away, said that we weren't allowed to film. That's not true at all. And eventually they gave us an ultimatum, either take down our signs and obey the mob that was shouting at us.

or keep our signs on, keep upholding this true message, and we would have to go down to the police station. So ultimately, that's what we decided to do. We went to the police station, we were arrested, strip searched, put in cells for a few hours. Why were you strip searched? I actually don't know. I guess this was the procedure. I didn't... I've never been arrested before, and so when they...

took us to be searched. I didn't question that this was an abnormal... It seems kind of excessive given the nature of the alleged offence. Yeah, I think so as well. Yeah, I have quite a few questions about things that happened the way the police acted that day. I do believe they did go to foreign and several fronts, but the strip searching especially I think was unnecessary.

So they take you to the police station, and what were you arrested for? It actually changed over time. When we were outside, we were told that this was an administrative matter, that we might get fined, that it was about not having permits. And we didn't think that that was right. We thought it was challenging. We challenged it.

but ultimately it wasn't a criminal charge. When we went to the police station, we were then told that it would be a criminal charge, that we were being charged with disturbing the peace, which they really should have told us beforehand. At that point, I kind of mentally remember accepting that, okay, if I get criminal charges...

Okay, it's going to make travel difficult. It's going to make work difficult. It will change my life quite substantially. It's quite a high cost for free speech. But I did kind of just internally accept it. I actually became a different person for those few hours. I was so calm. I'm not my... husband i'm a panicker i'm not you know i can by nature but um i think i don't know god was with me or i just kind of got this kind of um

attitude knowing that i was right knowing that the police were wrong in this situation i just i became very calm i thought through the cost and i was like okay i suppose that's the cost of what it is um fortunately over the next few hours um That got bumped down again to the administrative fund. And at the end, we left with nothing. So they can still decide to fine us within the next six months, but I doubt they will. And it won't be a criminal charge.

The thing that I found really interesting about the case is these men were behaving in a very physically aggressive manner. You're obviously a woman, but nothing happened to them. I know. I know. Actually, when they were being very threatening, there was one man in particular, he was trying to walk me back. He walked me back into this public square. He was trying to isolate me from Chris. And...

I remember looking around and looking for other men who were watching, because there were a lot of people watching. And wow, they were like, can you help me? And even these grown men that were watching said, they kept, I mean, some of them were just filming.

And they just shook their heads and they didn't help. And I thought that was very unprogressive for such a progressive society. I think he was a lot larger than me. He was a lot taller. Just the visuals of it worked in my favor in that sense. They should have been helped. But I guess because I had this message on that changed the calculation of who was a victim, who was a victor. And they didn't help.

It must have been a profoundly shocking event to happen to you because when you went out to essentially record social media content, I think the last thing that you would have expected, look. Let's be honest, it's a contentious issue even now. You're going to expect some kind of aggro. But to be arrested by the police? I know. I know. I think this speaks to a larger trend across Europe.

And we do get kind of confident in our message when it's on the gender issue because we've had so many women in the UK. But when you look across the continent, in Finland, we have a case. I work for a legal organization called ADF International. We've had a case there for the last five years where a politician is on criminal charges, charged under war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Finnish criminal code. Because in 2019, she tweeted...

question as to whether her church should really be sponsoring the Pride Parade. That has led to five years on criminal charges going up to the Supreme Court. That's just one example. I mean, across the continent, we see that there is still this censorship. this issue particularly when it comes to kids and um there is i think uh especially on the continent still a feeling of two camps without nuance in the uk we kind of have managed to pull out some of the um

more sensitive issues from this some people would say well you know it's different if there's adults but if it's children they shouldn't be able to make these decisions at such a young age or we have a little bit more of a color to the debate whereas I think in Europe it's still very polarized as to who's right who's wrong and if you're not on my team then you're on the other team and you're a bad person when i was when i was reading about your case it kind of reminded me about

a lot of countries on the continent's reaction to COVID in that they are far more authoritarian. We just don't really realize it. Because when you look at the French's reaction and the Belgians and all the rest of it, and then when I saw... The police's reaction to you and Chris, that is very authoritarian. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I actually lived in Austria during the COVID pandemic and they made it a criminal offence not to get vaccinated and they treated those who disagreed.

very poorly. You would get thrown out of shops and things if you didn't have the right papers to show that you had, you know, had second or third shots, etc. So many jokes. I am suppressing all the jokes. And the boy, you will not say that. We'll do that on Substack. So yeah, I think that that culture still has... such a presence there and it was ironic that we were being called fascists and nazis um when we were there you know as dissidents really to this um

Cultural lie that children can make these horrific decisions about their bodies at a very young age. You know, we're giving a positive message. These kids are beautiful. They don't need drugs and scalpels. They just need love and affirmation too. love the skin that they're in and to flourish and thrive as the kids that they're meant to be. Whereas there's this cultural lie that they...

should be taking puberty blockers and hormone therapies and even going through surgeries to maim their bodies in order to be right, to be correct. And so, like, the irony of us being told that we are the fastest was really troubling.

But I think one little ray of hope in the whole experience for me was when there was, when we were really surrounded at the maximum, when there was, I don't know, a crowd, I had terrible estimate numbers, maybe 40 people around us.

And they were all, a lot of them were dressed in black, a lot of them were yelling shame on you, but there was this one older lady that was in the crowd, and no one else saw it, but she just gave me a wink and a thumbs up. And I think I knew in the back of my mind that... When this was all over, I would have support from the free speech community and things like that. But at that moment, nobody was with us. And just having that one person gave us a little reminder that...

we're not crazy, that a lot of people do support us. It really gave us, like, encouragement and strength to go on. And also, as well, there was another sinister element to it, which billboard Chris, they kept the signs. Yes, I know. Yeah, so that, and it's, these signs are... not that cheap. I think they kept about £250 of our property and sent them to destruction.

which is hopefully something else that can be challenged. But yeah, I mean, literally stealing the truth and burning it, there's something very symbolic and bitter about that. And did they explain why they kept the signs? They just... We asked them several times. They just said, this is the way that it has to be. I got the sense that, I mean, there was about 15 police officers came for us, four policemen.

and some of them one particular man was very aggressive and hostile but some of them were not and they were just following orders you know they were just doing their jobs and i actually don't think that they thought that we were

particularly bad people. But you could see that they were just told to do these things and they didn't really question why. And I don't know which one's more concerning. The ones who were aggressive and hostile are the ones who just didn't speak up and question what was happening. It's a very sinister framework that we have. We've seen this in the UK as well, where effectively, if you are opposing something or making a statement about something...

which other people choose to respond to by being violent or aggressive. The person who is simply there making a view known about trans issues or Israel or Palestine or whatever. they are then accused of being the ones that are breaching the peace because it's easier for the police to arrest one person than to break up a mob of violent people. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think we even see it across different issues.

Sometimes it's the police want to just defuse a situation and you can almost kind of have some sympathy for them in that they haven't maybe had the free speech training that they need in order to know how to respond to that situation. But other times it does seem just purely ideological. I think for me the most concerning examples of censorship that we've seen in the West lately are those who've been criminalised, prosecuted.

and even convicted for praying silently in their heads near abortion facilities. So I've worked on several of these cases. And the first one, probably the most famous, Isabel von Spruce. She was arrested in this iconic viral...

video and there was nobody around that day. In fact, that first day that she went out to pray and she was arrested, the abortion clinic was closed. So there was nobody around even to... be you know offended or to be hostile to her she was just standing there with a thought in her head a pro-life thought a thought that went against the authorities of the day and she was arrested for that and it wasn't just once she was arrested twice we saw adam smith connor

the army veteran down in Bournemouth, who was later mentioned by J.D. Vance in his iconic speech in Munich, he was arrested and criminalized and found guilty for three minutes of silent prayer near an abortion facility. Again, nobody was offended. actually took hostility or complained about this. It was the police, it was the authorities that didn't want someone to just have this opinion. I think that is when censorship is at its most concerning, is when it's...

not even responding to a potential flare-up. It is just censorship for censorship's sake. If you're watching this interview, chances are you already know how important it is to think for yourself. But with the war in Gaza, that is not easy. The same events are framed completely differently depending on who's telling the story. In many ways, it's become as much of a battle of narratives as it is a battle on the ground. Which is why ground news is invaluable right now.

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People will always say something like this. Well, I don't agree with you being arrested, but why are you going out there with these signs? Why are you standing outside of an abortion clinic praying? Have you got nothing better to do? You can see where I'm going, right? Yeah, I mean, why pray there? Well, I...

My answer to that is, why pray anywhere? You can pray or think a thought or express a view on any square mile in Britain or the West. That is something that we fought for, we died for. And it's the most fundamental principle of a democracy. when you give up on that and say it's too much trouble to speak.

the truth to have a conversation that's really meaningful then you've given up on the entire idea and they may as well just censor um illegally because you've censored yourself anyway i mean there's very practical reasons for why i went out for why isabel or adam pray i mean Pro-life people for generations have stood in your clinics to offer help.

and support and alternatives to women who would like to seek other support than to have an abortion. And that, unfortunately, is no longer possible under the current laws, although it should, of course, be possible at least to stand silently at least to think a thought to prayer a prayer. So there's practical reasons. But there's also just the fundamental...

need to preserve your right to say anything in a democracy. And it might be the issue that you don't like today. Maybe you don't care about the pro-life cause. Maybe it doesn't bother you about, you know, kids being related through transgender surgeries. But if these causes at the kind of...

you know, the first line of defense fall, then it will be your cause very soon that is censored on the grounds, you know, in areas of Britain. So we have to all stand together or fall together. I'm getting at something slightly different though, which is...

A lot of people might even somewhat agreeing with what you're putting forward, just feel like you're making trouble on purpose. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not saying I agree with this point of view, but I do. I can... hear that. That's a provocative gesture. Yeah, it's like you go out and into the public and say something that you know is controversial, even though you believe it to be true. you are naturally then going to produce an angry response. And isn't it...

Some people might say the police's job to kind of deal with that and prevent you from being hurt. I mean, arresting you, this argument falls apart pretty quickly, but I'm trying my best to steal money. Sure, sure. Well, I guess the...

When an issue is particularly important, and you can think of different issues throughout history that have been overturned through conversations, through advocacy. You know, you can think of slavery. It was so normal. You know, back in the day, it was what society was built on, but it was through conversations.

It was through speaking up that things like that fell. And now we are faced with controversial issues of our day. But why are they controversial? Often because they involve an element of right and wrong. And if we cannot grapple with those. ideas amongst ourselves in the public square, then we're just going to leave it to what politicians? They depend on votes, they depend on it. If we cannot...

get these messages of truth out, then we can never challenge things that are wrong. And I think it's wrong to tell a kid that they're born in the wrong body. I think it's wrong to entice them along a path. that will give them permanent bodily damage and lead them into something that is often, you know...

linked to serious mental health consequences as well. I think it's so wrong to fish kids along that path. If we cannot speak out about it, we cannot have those conversations one-to-one in public, then we can never get that message across. That's why it's vital. So you're forcing the conversation about these issues into the public debate, which...

It's a fair enough point, I suppose. It's interesting. The thing about the wrong body, I did an interview with a big Russian YouTuber and he challenged me on this because he turned out not to agree with my view on it. And in Russian... it it's not the wrong body that the phraseology

Because of the way Russian works, it has to be someone else's body. And when I heard him say it in Russian, I was like, this makes even less sense than it does in English. Ironically, he cut out that whole discussion from the interview. But I... Look, why do you think people are so angry about you making this statement in public? I mean, people might disagree, but why does it make them violently angry, do you think? I think when it comes to something...

As harmful, as potentially damaging. If I am right, if the science is right, if... If my message is true, then it means that a lot of people have participated in something that has actually been extremely harmful for either their kids or they've supported it for other people's children, and that's really hard to reconcile with. I can totally understand that that's a very sensitive issue.

We can't therefore, because it has been done, just perpetuate this on forever because we don't want to reckon with what has gone wrong. And I understand that a lot of people have acted under false information or false understandings of what the right thing to do is.

But if we're not open to being challenged about having potentially done the wrong thing, we'll never be able to stop that for someone else's child happening. So there was somebody who came who was aggressive to us, who said, I had a... Her kind of refrain was, I have a trans daughter. And so obviously she's committed to that worldview. And if she got it wrong, if I'm right, then she has caused harm to her child.

So it's difficult. It's sensitive. It can make people angry, I think, because of that. But that's not a reason not to have the conversation. That's not a reason to suppress the truth. I agree. I think also the thing is as well. I think people have realized, looking back on social justice movements, you know, gay rights, et cetera, et cetera, you know, we got a lot of stuff wrong.

We got a lot of stuff wrong. And so I think people overcorrected on this particular issue and they see it as a moral crusade without actually looking at the facts of what is actually going on. Yeah, we're often blind to our own... A lot of people, and we're all guilty of this, will come up with our ideology first and find the facts to sit in the narrative. But I think with... And we've been so privileged in the UK to see the evidence...

that's come out of the Tavistock Clinic, the link between children who think they're transgender and who have autism. I think it was, according to Hannah Barnes's book, 97.5% of kids at the Tavistock Clinic had some other situation. going on like bullying, anxiety, depression, etc. And over a third of them had autism, whereas only less than 2% of kids in the country have autism. Not anymore, Lose. Everyone's got autism now. Or ADHD. Kids. That's right. But...

Yeah, so we've seen this evidence in bulk. We've seen how that's had a result at the Supreme Court. We don't really have an excuse not to know the facts and the science anymore. And I can't remember exactly what your question was. Sorry, that's my bad. It's essentially, when we look at previous social justice movements, civil rights, we look back and go, oh, we kind of...

made a few mistakes on this one. So this is another compensation, I think, as well, for instance. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're scared to challenge dominant thinking. We're scared to challenge the kind of wave of if you can identify as a... And the other, why can't you identify as a boy? Why can't you identify as a girl? But yeah, it's easy to get on the left side. Sorry to interrupt. I think what Frances is saying is something else, which is a lot of people are aware that the end...

They might feel that they ended up on, you might be a little young to feel like this, but a lot of people might feel that there were periods in the past when the majority of society, the dominant worldview was insufficiently.

Compassionate and understanding and willing to incorporate perspectives of people who were not like them. And there's a fear of making... those mistakes again which is i think where maybe some of the motivation is also coming from yeah exactly and i think there is amongst the kind of boomer generation um more of a um

propensity to that view to not speak out you see a lot of support i guess amongst that generation for um being on the right side of history um and not questioning whether this really is the right side of history if we really have gone too far. There's got to be a point which kind of liberalism kind of hits the buffers and we see the harms. And it's okay to course correct and to say that, you know, if...

Yeah, to course correct and come back and say, we've gone too far. We're harming kids. We're harming people. Let's see if we can bend back a little bit into something that's safer. I'm actually genuinely proud of... Because I think Britain has actually led the world in this conversation, in this discussion. And look, there's, of course, there's toxic elements to it. But the fact that you had brave people on the left, like J.K. Rowling.

female Labour MPs or former Labour MPs, and I like Rosie Duffield, showed that it wasn't a bipartisan issue. This was about children's safety. It was about female rights. The problem I think comes when people classify it as their left or right issue. Yeah.

And that's very much the case in America. Is that the case across Europe? I think more so, yeah. And yeah, we've been so lucky to have these immense spokespersons on both sides, but I think...

A lot of the people that were in Brussels that day accused us of being American, and actually neither of us are, although we both sound American. I am Scottish and Chris is Canadian. But the initial reaction was like, oh, you're American fascist. And they obviously have only ever seen this debate through the prism. of the kind of extremes or the more American polarized version of it.

which, when reported on in Europe, is reported on as good and evil, with the Democrats being the side of the good in a lot of European media. And so that kind of narrative shape has infected a lot of the thinking and reduced... willingness to look at the actual science and evidence and to come up with people's own opinions. And do you know what the EU's approach to this is? Because that would be genuinely fascinating.

Yeah, so I think the EU itself doesn't have competence on this area. It's a national issue, which ultimately is good, allowing countries to make their own mind up on it.

I mean, the EU can obviously show some ideological favoritism when it comes to, I believe, there was just a few weeks before we went to Brussels. In fact, I'd actually, Chris had tweeted about... this scene coming out for me, I think it's Ursula von der Leyen's Twitter with trans pride flags, and that had actually sparked us into thinking, oh, it might be worth going to Europe to have some of these conversations on the street and to meet with some European politicians and to...

to challenge some of this thinking. So clearly there is a kind of ideological bias within the institution, but thankfully that doesn't set policy at the moment within nations. And I also think as well, I mean, Europe is coming to its own reckoning with a lot of progressive... policies, for instance, mass immigration, which is...

proven, unfortunately, to create a lot of social problems. I think more and more people are starting to wake up and realise just because something sounds good doesn't mean it actually is good or has positive real-world implications. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there is a stream towards that. It's tough because we have to bend back a lot of the kind of journey to extreme liberalism that brought us here. I think there was...

This might be a bit controversial, but in the kind of 60s, in the sexual revolution, we had this kind of birth of feminism, or this spurt of feminism, let's say, which said... Women are just as good as men, if not better. A woman can do anything a man can do. A woman can be a CEO and a boss and behave like a man and have, you know, like...

a certain commitment like a man would do in a stereotypical situation, and be this kind of Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City, male-dominant lifestyle. And that kind of thinking of... women and men are just interchangeable, we can act like a man, has kind of led us on this path to now say, I mean, if a woman can have everything a man can have, a woman can be a man, why can't a man just literally be a woman? Why can't a woman just literally be a man?

And it's tough to reckon with. And I know a lot of the people who have championed this cause are feminists, so I know it's a tricky thing to reckon with. But I think we have... disintegrate so much what it means positively to be a woman, what it means positively to be a man, and celebrate the differences between them, the kind of complementary differences, that we struggle to unpick socially why it is. that this ideology doesn't work. Sorry, I don't mean to be argumentative. Go for it.

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It's kind of on brand for me, but I'm only asking because it doesn't make much sense. I don't understand the logic of we told women they could be everything, a man is, to then them... some of some people thinking well you can actually become a man that doesn't make sense to me because one is about well look at you like you have a career you're out there working just as much as your husband is right you're doing all these things

But I don't understand the leap from that to, well, suddenly I want to cut my breasts off. That's a little bit far for me. No, I mean, and there's incredible, like, I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I have. Absolutely. But I think there's an ideology which has said and has disintegrated the things that women used to celebrate being a woman for. So you very seldom hear motherhood being celebrated today, even though motherhood is an intrinsic part of being a woman.

do. That doesn't mean that every woman has to be a mother, but it is a wonderful part of being a mom and to be involved in family life. These things are kind of seen as second-class women now, whereas the first-class women are seen as the ones who are out there being CEOs and boss babes. And again, there's nothing morally wrong with either of these things, but I think we've just disintegrated the celebration of the uniqueness of being a woman.

And then also the uniqueness of being a man. And there's things that men can do that women can't do. There's strengths that men have physically, but also in different areas of life that women don't have. There are biological differences. There are psychological differences. You see that in parenting.

A woman will be much more the nurturing parent to the small newborn, and the dad is the one that's more likely to be throwing them up, teaching them different skills. So men and women are different, and that's a good thing, and there's lots to be celebrated from that. by erasing that, by saying they're just the same, they're just, anyone can do anything. Then it's everything's interchangeable. Everything's interchangeable. That makes more sense. I think that lead is on a path.

you know, over many decades now, to have this ideology of like, well, if we now have the technology that if someone really wants to be a man, instead of saying this woman is a great, has great leadership skills, she said, well, she has a great leadership skill, so she should be a man. and therefore make the technological leap to be a man. And so, yeah, we've kind of ended up with this confusion of gender, this wreck of...

what it means to have kind of a human difference in biological sex. I think we've lost a lot. Look, I completely agree. Back to the kitchen you go. But to me, look, the women's rights aspect of this conversation is obviously important. You know, talking about feminism, very interesting. But to me, the most important thing about this conversation is the kids.

And what is happening to the kids? Because as somebody who worked with children for 12 years, this idea that a child... can identify as another gender and suddenly they're able to consent to all these medical interventions, to surgeries, to me was quite frankly demented. Yeah, it absolutely is. And in the UK, although we've gotten rid of puberty blockers for now, we still have this upcoming drug study, drug trial, which will allow...

It's capless and allows basically, it's a gateway to allow any children who want to experiment, puberty blockers, to join this drug trial and have access to them and still have this. bodily harm done to them even the puberty blockers they can cause you know bone density damage heart problems as well as the psychological effects and the long-term pathway to harmful surgeries just to stop what about the sterilization aspect of it is that is that

also a thing? Yeah, if it goes on long enough, and obviously, of course, one thing leads to another, which will take it. But sterilization can occur after prolonged use of puberty blockers. So what you're effectively saying is I thought that we put this conversation to bed and actually kids and puberty blockers, that is never going to happen again because of the Cass report. Unfortunately not. I mean, it is.

It was great to see the Labour government come in and put in that puberty blend. And Hamza Yusuf from Scotland, also quite a left-wing politician, he banded up in Scotland under his leadership as well. So that was exciting to see. But with this drug trial... coming in in the UK that will allow this to continue. And so I have a concern that we're not quite...

At the victory moment that we think we're at yet, we still have a lot of work to do. We still have to, I would like to see this drug trial cancelled, but I'd like to see this conversation. continues so that nobody forgets about this damage that can happen, you know, the sterilisation of kids, the harm to their bodies, the harm to their psychology, and just that fundamental lie that they're not who they're meant to be. But I don't understand why there was...

A report came in. It advised that puberty blockers should be banned. This is by one of the most prestigious paediatricians in the country. I thought we'd won. What do you mean that there's a drug trial now? How's this been allowed to happen?

A lot of people don't know about it. And so maybe it hasn't had the scrutiny that it deserves, and it hasn't come into force yet. But I'm very, very concerned about it. And it's not even just the cast report. We then, only a few months ago, had an American version of saying the same thing as the cast. And we've had the same evidence come out of Sweden, Finland, across many of the northern European countries, they've produced these.

reports as well that show that it can be harmful to have these drugs. And yet somewhere underneath there's still a push, there's still a movement to try and liberalise this. law for kids and so we have to stand really firm we have to have keep having this conversation we have to keep talking about the harms that this can endure and talk about how

perfect and beautiful kids are in their own bodies, in order to prevent this coming and prevent us turning back the clock. The victory isn't sealed. We have to keep going. And you say that there's been this push. I mean, is it organisations like Mermaids? I mean, where is this coming from?

Surely every right-thinking person now looks at this and goes, this is an abomination. I think there is still, I mean, a lot of the PR kind of battle has been won on this issue, but I think there's still a lot of people within... places of power who hold a different view that are maybe just biding their time. Winning the PR battle is so strong, but it isn't everything. I mean, that is, look.

The work that has been done on this by lots of different people, gender critical feminists and paediatricians and everybody, it's been incredible. But it's slightly disheartening to hear that it's... continuing and that there are these people in positions of power who are still pushing this narrative. Yeah, I know. It's very disheartening.

because it seems so obviously true, right? It seems like the most important message of regeneration and the most critical message, children shouldn't be having these horrible drugs. And the point of this trial is to establish whether it's harmful or not? Yeah, the test report actually unfortunately left the door open for this. It said that there can be studies carried out to test further if the probity blockers cause harm.

the Department of Health and Human Services, said that there shouldn't be a trial. They said that this stuff was so dangerous and so immoral that it wouldn't be right to test it on kids. It's like human experiments, really, isn't it? Yeah, it's human guinea pigs. And so the US reporter said, don't do it. But the cast report said it is okay to do it. And so we've been left in this difficult situation in the UK. So we need, you know, some...

firmer and stronger to come in and say no, to look at this evidence and say, we don't even want to test this. It isn't right to test it on a child. No child can fully consent to that. They can't consent to being infertile at 30 years old. When I was in Australia talking to... Melbourne students who are very woke.

They, you know, at 18, were like, I don't care. I don't want to have kids anyway. But when people get to, you know, 30, 35, they're saying, give me kids or give me a divorce. You know, it's a total change in lifetime is 18 to 35. you're almost a different person in terms of your views and your desires.

And especially if you're taking these drugs at a younger age than 18, if you're taking them at 13 or 12, how are you ever going to know what you want? It's unfair to put that responsibility on a child. And that's why all these drug studies must end. And especially, you know, we have to...

not only continue this in the UK but around the world we want to see puberty blockers banned in every single country. And how many kids are involved in this trial? So it's capless. So I mean it's not begun yet but... Once started, there's currently no cap on how many children can take part. So potentially hundreds of kids can take it and... But there is still time.

For it to be prevented from going ahead. Well, I hope people are listening to that and learning about that. Lois, the other part of your work that we wanted to talk about, and look, we've had for full disclosure on this. subject of abortion. We had Anne Fioredi, who is very supportive of that being available to women in this country. And we've had your husband.

Callum Miller on the show to talk about the pro-life position or anti-abortion position, whatever you might want to call it. And I can't say that either Francis or I came away from those two discussions. with, like, a position firmly in one camp or the other. I won't tell Callum. Well, he's probably watching. But at the same time... My view has always been that kind of where we were in Britain was a very unpleasant and messy, unfortunate...

compromise that was probably broadly reflective of the wishes of the people of this country. And while, you know, people who are very pro-life like you would not like it, there will also very kind of firm pro-abortion campaigners that might not like it. It was kind of a settled issue in this country. You might not think that's a good thing, but you get what I'm saying, right? And now, what we've got now, the Labour government has just basically decriminalised abortion.

Up until birth. Yeah. And I'm someone who really doesn't want to be talking about this issue. You know, it's not an issue I'm particularly keen to get involved in. I'm going, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, I know. What's going on? I think a lot of people feel like that. It's crazy. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. Up to birth. What are you talking about? So what happened? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean.

I think a lot of people have reacted like you reacted because we had, as you say, an abortion lot 24 weeks. Most people in the country didn't actually know. when it was and they knew it was somewhere in the middle 24 weeks is actually quite high for the average person according to polling when finding out it's 24 weeks which is

Double the EU average, most EU countries are at 12 to 15 weeks. 70% of women actually wanted to see that lowered because at 24 weeks it's a viable child. There's a lot of characteristics which people would want to protect. And so actually the majority of people wanted it lowered and only 1% of women actually wanted to see abortion up to birth. And yet now we have this situation.

which was catalyzed during COVID because they introduced pills by post-abortion. So this was a scheme where within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, you could call up an abortion provider, say, in less than 10 weeks, and you would receive pills through your own abortion. in your own bathroom, which actually seems to me like one of the reasons that we brought in abortion on the first place was to avoid women doing it.

to themselves by themselves. It doesn't seem safe or dangerous to me. In fact, there was a lot of investigations to show that it increased the likelihood of people needing an ambulance, needing medical care after. But this is the situation that was brought in.

Unfortunately, it's both easy to mistake how far you want in a pregnancy. It's also quite easy to lie about how far you are on in a pregnancy. And so there were some cases of women who would call up at... 33, 35 weeks really near the end of pregnancy, say that they're less than 10 weeks after a short conversation, receive these pills and carry out an abortion on a viable, healthy baby in a...

very horrific circumstance, of course, you need to birth that child after you've taken those pills. There was a very famous case called Carla Foster. who birthed her dead baby. She later called her Lily. She talked about the traumatic experience it was, and she did face prosecution for what she had done to this child because abortion at 33 to 35 weeks was illegal. Instead, my response to the tragedy of

what happened to Carla and her baby and for the few others that it affected in terms of other women engaging in this illegal action was, my goodness, we need to end pills by post-abortion. So to protect women, the law is... not to criminalize, but also to protect. To protect women from being in this situation, no one should be delivering their dead child alone in their bathroom. This is horrific.

And no child should have to, at that stage, very pain-capable, very sentient, would have faced a horrific death as a baby at 35 weeks as well. So that's what I thought, you know. protect the law, strengthen the law. Other people thought, well, let's get rid of the law so that women who do this at this stage don't face prosecution.

And so what we will likely see now is instead of this affecting a small percentage of women who take this action towards the end of their pregnancy, it's now not criminalised. There's no law to deter women from engaging in this. It could be that we see an increase now in these babies being lost at this very late stage in pregnancy.

It's also horrible for the women. I know people who've had the miscarriage fairly early on in the pregnancy, for whom that and the process, I won't go into details, but... very, very physically challenging, sometimes life-threatening, actually.

Even if you think abortion should be available to whatever point, I don't think you'd want to encourage people to do it themselves without medical support in this way, where there's also, as you say, no verification of the age of the baby. I just, I don't.

This isn't right. Yeah, I know. This really isn't right. I know. And so now we're in this ridiculous scenario where you can do it to yourself at the latest and most dangerous stage of pregnancy, but a doctor can't help you. And so obviously the next step for that movement is going to say, well, we must legalize it for doctors as well. And therefore we just have no abortion law left in this country.

will be up to 40 weeks for any reason, which actually is very much out of step with the majority of polling. Very few people think it should be for any reason at all. Very, very few people think it should be up to birth. If you think about it, if you've seen a newborn baby...

It doesn't look very different the day before. It's just in a geographically different place, and it's mother's womb. But to say, you know, on that day, a baby in that morning waking up could be killed or could be born on one day, it's... I think it's actually good for us as a nation to be face to face with the level of evil this is, the level of depravity this is, that we have allowed ourselves to kill babies at this stage. I think we needed that wake up call.

And maybe now we can kind of reconsider, is this really what we want? I can't imagine. Look, I think it's very important to distinguish between legalizing abortion, which is not what's happened, right? But you explained it very well. But nonetheless, I can't imagine the majority of people in Britain or even a significant minority of people in Britain want women to be... Getting a pill through the post that they take and even if the baby is almost ready to be born.

Do you want to prosecute women for it? You probably should just not allow people to have an abortion by post. That's probably what you actually should deal with. But I just... I don't understand how this has happened. I think it's really terrible. I think it's really terrible as well. I mean, at that stage in pregnancy, you have to give birth to the child anyway. People kind of think that abortion is a magic pill that just disappears the child. You have to deliver that child dead or alive.

So why not? If you're in a situation where you cannot take care of that child, can you not allow them to live and find adoption as an option? Can we allow them a chance at life? Do we have to kill the child at that stage? It's perfectly healthy, perfectly viable. it's so difficult to come face to face with and yet here we are as a nation that's what we've decided that we want look starting a business is exciting but it isn't easy

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That's shopify.co.uk slash trigger. You know, for a society that is obsessed with mental health... and constantly bangs on about mental health to the point where everybody is now sick of it. You go, do you not worry about the mental health of a mother who is maybe weeks or even days away from having... a baby and then orders those pills. Right.

If that's not a cry for help, I don't actually know what is. Yeah, in fact, a pro-choice scholar, David Ferguson from Australia, he's one of the leading pro-choice scholars, but he's passed away now, but he did research on mental health and abortion and showed that actually... Abortion can increase someone's risk to suicidality by 70% and drug abuse by almost 300%. It's an incredibly traumatic event to go through.

I think in our propaganda and our rhetoric today, we minimize this as just, oh, it's just someone's choice. It's just a pill that they take. It's just like getting a tooth pulled is what I've been told multiple times. It's not. It's incredibly traumatic. which ends the life of one of the people involved. And I think because we don't take it seriously, we've allowed ourselves to get to the situation because if it's not a life...

If it's not a life, then it wouldn't matter, right? If it's not a life, then it doesn't matter if it's 24 weeks or 40 weeks. But if it is, then this is the most serious and grave situation that we... find ourselves in. And I think we have to reckon with that as a nation and think, do we want this? Do we want abortion up to birth? Do we think that babies do not count because they are smaller or weaker or dependent on their mother?

Is that the kind of human rights framework that we subscribe to? Or do we want to have to give people a bit more value just based on the fact that they're human, just based on the fact that they are a member of our species, a member of our race? Can we protect them and find better for...

those babies and for their mothers instead. And I take the point about the baby, but I think my point was something else, which is if, look, having a child, and I've seen friends go through it, and it's profoundly stressful, particularly for the mother. You know, postpartum depression, hormones all over the place. There should be a mental health intervention.

If a woman is saying with a matter of weeks to go that she wants to abort her baby, there is something very serious happening mentally. That woman needs support. not here's some pills and go into a bathroom and kill your kid. Exactly, exactly. And I think because abortion has become so trivialised, I think...

This is the most extreme case of it, but I think all along the journey with abortion, it's often seen as just a, oh, you're in trouble or you're distressed, you're worried about this pregnancy, let's take an abortion pill. It's seen as just a really quick reliever, a really quick solution. That can be a cry for help early in pregnancy as well.

Especially late on, you're absolutely right. If they have carried this child for 35 weeks and they want to just take a pill to end their life, it does make no sense. And we should have much more serious mental health safeguarding. within this kind of area or this kind of industry, this abortion industry. But I think because, like, ideologically...

It has been reduced so much to just a woman's rights issue. It has been reduced to, you know, it's my body, my choice. It's just a pill. It's just like getting a tooth pulled because it has become, you know, such a...

being diminished so much, they don't have those mental health safeguards in place, don't have those physical health safeguards in place, or those legal safeguards to protect women from going through this experience. And it also says something, I mean, horrifically antenatal about our culture. The fact that this is deemed acceptable is, quite frankly, disgusting. Yeah, an anti-mother, right? Yeah. It's putting out the message that this is better than becoming a mother. I think we really lack...

a lot of support for moms and for babies in those early stages. There's a lot more that we can be doing. in our society, in our community to help mothers, you know, be in community with each other, be meeting other moms, be, you know, not stressed about having to go back to work straight away, but instead of be supported to take the time off that they need.

There's so much more we can be doing to help and support mothers and babies, but instead what we often just offer is, you know, is your body your choice or is your problem your choice? Like, you want to have this baby, you're on your own, or you just take an abortion pill. We don't have that support.

that would be so much better. And do you think this is a case of just people trying to solve a legal problem so they make a law that's probably not very smart? Or is there kind of an extreme ideological bent to all of this? I think there's an ideological ban. I think it's clear that on the kind of pro-abortion lobby side, there can't be anything wrong with abortion because then...

If one thing is wrong with abortion, then everything is wrong. It's one of those black and white issues. But it's very, that's a very extreme framing of it, Lowe, surely, because I think, and the polling to which you refer probably shows all of this, probably...

You tell me if I'm wrong, but I imagine most people in this country support abortion being available at some point. Sure. Right. Is that fair? Yeah, sure. And most people recognize that it is a women's rights issue to some extent. Sure. Because it affects women in a very profound way. Right.

But on the other hand, the woman is not the only person involved. And so what you're trying to do is find some sort of compromise, which is where I think most of the country is at. Is that a fair observation? But this is extreme. This is really extreme. Yeah. And so I'm just trying to understand, is it because they were like, well, look, actually, well, you know, even when I think about it, do I want this woman who's probably in a really terrible state of mind who's made a...

a bad decision, a terrible decision for her that's going to affect her for the rest of her life. Do I want her to then also go to prison for it? When you frame it like that, I don't know. What I'd rather is if you're going to have an abortion, you have medical support, you have counselling around that, you have all the things there.

to make sure that physically, medically, in other ways, you're supported. That's what I'd prefer. So do you think they just hadn't considered this aspect of it, or is the Labour government really... kind of like oh let's just you know allow women to kill babies well no we agree more than you think because i i also think this isn't the average person's wish i don't think the average person was working on this but i think that there is um

a pro-abortion lobby that would take a more extreme view. And you think they've influenced this decision? Yeah, I think, to me, it seems like a clear pathway to go from pills by post to legalising. decriminalizing abortion for women at the end of pregnancy and then decriminalizing it for doctors. There's a clear kind of pathway. We can't let women do this by themselves. We've got to have medical help there. Exactly. You can see the kind of slope. This is crazy. This is insane, though.

yeah this isn't right this is not acceptable yeah um this is crazy no i know i keep repeating myself i literally haven't this is completely unacceptable i know it's complete so um Do you sense that there's a potential for any kind of amendments to this going forward? Is this being looked at or is this now, you know, they've decided and this is where we are? Well, I've been encouraged, as you said at the start, a lot of people who...

have never really engaged in this issue, suddenly have formed an opinion in the last few weeks and seen the extremity of where we're at. And are now speaking that, and I include politicians in that from different parties. And I think, you know, it's...

I don't think the matter is settled. I think it's going to be something that's discussed in upcoming elections. I think parties will be thinking right now how they want to respond to this in their manifesto, for example, because I think they won the political battle.

But I don't think they won the PR battle. I don't think they won the nation over to this idea that it should be all the way up to birth. I tell you, though, you know, as someone who understands public communication a little bit, if you... get normal people to recognize what's happened here and to fully understand it. Whoever passed this is going to have no support whatsoever. This is not going to be popular with the public when they get what's happened.

The ordinary British person isn't going to be on board with this. They just aren't. It's already not popular. Again, polling shows only 1% of women actually support abortion up to birth. when you think about it, very few support abortion to birth. So I think they did push their luck on going this far. 24 Weeks was already extreme. 24 Weeks was already one of the most liberal in the world. To go up to...

40 was too far. And I think this opens the conversation again for where do we want to put this? Where do we want to start protecting life? But it's also recklessly irresponsible because you're just going to dish out these pills to women. who are, let's say, eight months pregnant. You don't know what the psychological state of this woman is. Maybe she can't consent.

Maybe she's so depressed, which happens to a lot of women. Maybe she's in a position where she simply can't consent for whatever reason to be taking these pills. She takes the pill. Yeah. I mean, that's a potential lawsuit, surely. Yeah. Well, I mean, what about, you know, this is the case at the start, you know, even if they aren't at the end of their pregnancy, if they're calling up for pills at any stage, how do you know that that's not an 18-year-old sitting with her 45-year-old?

boyfriend across the table who's also listening to the phone and the abortion fighter says, is this all your own idea? And she says, yes, yes. While he's going. Exactly. When we brought in this way to get an abortion pill with such little safeguarding, with such little care or prevention of, you know, abuses, it used to be that if you would go in...

to get your abortion plan, you'd have a bit of counselling and they'd be able to ask you on your own, is anyone influencing you to do this? Can you lie there? Yes. It's not fail safe. Absolutely not.

But at least there's a little bit more than a quick phone call with someone you've never met when you're just trying to get a hold of these pills. So when we reduced... abortion pills just you know getting it's almost like getting a paracetamol through the post you know it's look during covid all kinds of crazy shit happened it was a lot of it was completely unacceptable but you kind of go it was covid you know there's lots of arguments about women stuck with her abusive boyfriend

You can kind of imagine it. COVID's over. And now we should be repealing the things that were extremely... But instead, politicians doubled down and they made this permanent.

Doesn't make any sense, sorry. Do you think this is a cost-cutting exercise? So, like, if you think about every time, let's say a woman's eight months pregnant, she wants to kill her baby. Let's just be honest, that's what it is. And they go to a doctor. It's actually far cheaper for them not to have to go to a GP. And a GP will talk to this person and go, actually, this woman is... Well, she can't go to a doctor if the baby is eight months, right, at this point?

Yeah, so she wouldn't be able to get a doctor after 24 weeks. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Well, there's some situations, but they're rare. Okay, so, but you just go, nothing about this makes sense. And look... I know people are going to get upset about this, but I just imagine if you're the father of that child, and then you find out that your eight-month-old baby has effectively been killed.

I don't know what I would do. That would feel... That's the death of my child. Yeah. Yeah. I think abortion culture has really impacted... men and fatherhood as well, just something that just doesn't come up as often. And I understand why. I know I keep interrupting. What's abortion culture?

The idea that it should be prominent and normal, like that Lily Allen laughing about having her five abortions is just a regular occurrence, that it's your body, your choice, and no one can question it. The cultural presumption that... that abortion is okay and even good, kind of backfired on both men and women because it used to be that, and this is obviously an ideal scenario, and...

It didn't always work out like this, but it used to be that if you got a girl pregnant, you would probably marry her, you would take responsibility, you'd become parents, mother and father. With the advent of My Body, My Choice, it really became your body, your choice, your issue, your problem, you're on your run. If you want to keep this baby, it's on you. And so that allowed the disintegration of that fatherhood responsibility.

It allows men to abandon their responsibility, which is what you're really saying. It allows men to abandon, and it also now enforces that abandonment because... Men have no say whether their child is aborted. And it's a sensitive one, and I can understand, you know, people feel like it's a woman's body. I understand that they carry the hardship of the pregnancy.

But in disintegrating this idea that it was meant to be together, it was meant to be a joint responsibility. It's actually atomized and isolated both parts, which makes it much harder on both. And I just feel that... This is a part of the conversation that's not being talked about because particularly for men, if eight months old and the baby is killed, that's... And then there's... What are you left with? There's no recourse to any type of...

justice or anything. You're just left with the knowledge that your baby's been killed. And what do you do? You just get up and go to work the next day and carry on as if nothing has happened? Right. that's a profound grief that's going to be impacted upon you. Yeah, and there's a kind of psychological dissonance as well. I know at least in Scotland, maybe in England as well, you can now get a kind of death certificate if you have a miscarriage in your pregnancy, even before 24 weeks.

To acknowledge the pain and suffering. To acknowledge the loss of that life, to acknowledge that there was a child that was there and now there isn't. So, you know, you can have this. Our society, our government grants this recognition to some children, but others, because of a decision that was made, they're just a clump of cells. Our human dignity or human worth can't just depend on whether we are wanted. It's got to depend on something more than that.

You know, it's interesting. I've never thought about this, but you kind of, when you mentioned men taking responsibility, I never thought about this. But people might not know this about me. So I was born when my mom was 18. She just turned 18 four days before. And my dad was. 20. They met at university, probably had a one-night stand or whatever, and they could have had a different option in my case. But my dad did take responsibility.

My parents' marriage, you know, not necessarily the best one, but nonetheless, four children. Yeah. All in the, you know, happy and unhappy in their own different ways. But like. Like, I might not have been here. Yeah. The world doesn't get a constant kissing. Yeah, a lot of people would be happy about that. So you've all missed out. No, but, like, I think that...

I think that's a very profound point, actually. And I've always felt, it's not that I was ever likely to be in that position, but I'd always nonetheless felt that if I was in a position where a child was coming into the world because of me, ultimately was my responsibility. I think it's a very unhealthy society that doesn't teach men that. It doesn't expect that of them, but also does not create the conditions for that to also then be reciprocated with, as you say.

them having some input into that decision being made as well. Now, I would hope nonetheless, and maybe you can tell us, Lois, that in most situations, nonetheless, it is the two... potential parents who are having that discussion? Is that...? Depends. I mean, there's no way to measure, there's no way to gather data on that kind of thing. So, you know, whether it's together or a lot of girls will... I mean, because it's so diminished...

And to me, a lot of girls will just do it by themselves or at the encouragement of friends. I've got a good friend who had an abortion at 19, effectively because her friends told her to. And told her it would be no big deal. And that was one of the most profound regrets of her life. And so, yeah, and when you were talking, Constantine, I was thinking as well that this is kind of baked into society from a young age, because instead of having that expectation of fatherhood and responsibility...

At schools now, we have a lot of sex ed. We don't have any family ed. We don't have... We get told consistently how to avoid pregnancy, but nothing about... Well, it's because then you're moralizing. You're telling people the stable family with the mum and the dad is just like... you know you're excluding people and all this other stuff which of course yes i'm somewhat sensitive to making sure everyone's included but also there is a typical way of doing this thing that works yeah and that

also to be communicated somehow it seems to me yeah and i was very fortunate i guess because i was brought up in the cult a in the culture but also in a family where these things were kind of you know made manifest to me yeah But I can totally see how absent that in a society where technologically everything is now so easy and just, oh, you know, you order a Deliveroo and an abortion pill in the same transaction. Yeah.

It's not good. It's not good, Louis. It's not. It's not. It's not good at all. Yeah, and I think you're right in terms of the, you know, we're scared to speak about. a mom and a dad being best for a child. But again, it's kind of... Prioritising adult wants and desires and needs above what's good and healthy and right and statistically proven. Having a father in the picture in the home is going to prevent that child by many hundreds of percentage points.

from committing crime, from failing out at school. They have a much better chance of going into university, having a stable appointment, good health. The statistics are just so clear and obvious. The data is there about good fathers and good mothers. And I appreciate that.

be situations of course that um a woman will have no choice but to go along and we should give her all the support that she needs and there'll be situations where dads are cut out with a picture without their and that's really tough as well but i think we should um at least talk about how we can

promote and help families to have that ideal scenario and to support their child in the best way. Yeah. And by the way, just to, sorry, Francis, just on, I want, I know people who are same-sex couples who are bringing up children brilliantly. And so this is why it's difficult because.

I certainly don't want to say, you know, these types of couples can't raise a child properly. And that is what a lot of people hear. But at the same time, there's got to be room to say that the typical way of this, the way that this is done is like a mom and a dad.

And that's something that we might want to tell children at some point. We might also tell them that, you know, in some occasions, some people are different, they might do this. But broadly speaking, we should also be communicating that.

That seems to me like the right balance. The problem with this inclusion agenda is that it's become exclusion. If it was about inclusion, which is like, look, this is kind of how we normally do it, but this thing also happens and we are... aware of that and accepting of that and tolerant of that that's fine by me at least but we've gone too far now it seems to me to the point where we're just excluding the norm and celebrating only the non-typical way of being.

Yeah. I mean, Katie Faust is one of the best writers out there on this. She was raised by two lesbian mums. I didn't know that by Katie. And she now does a lot of work challenging the... She takes a child-first approach, which I think is really helpful. And so are there intrinsic desires in adults to have children? And is that a lovely thing? Yes, absolutely. And I don't want to diminish that at all.

is it right to deprive a child of a father, or deprive a child of a mother? That's really hard on the child, and we can't be blind to what that does for a newborn baby to be taken away from a mother, for example, in a surrogate situation, and be deprived of that mother.

to fulfill the well-meaning desires of another couple i think that's something that we have to challenge a little bit or unbiases on but you're right also that if you look at a children's library these days you'd think that that was the average situation and the children with a mom and dad are not normal and um yeah i think there just has to be a lot more of an open conversation

on this and people are very scared and um it's difficult you don't want to offend people but we have to talk about the data oh look this is a very uncomfortable conversation to be having we're talking about the sex ed thing what we don't teach women is about their fertility and how fertility decreases over age until they come to a point when it becomes very unlikely, then impossible. And with some women, you know, the older they get, fertility sometimes falls off a cliff. It's just...

an unfortunate truth. And sometimes a woman has an abortion early on, that may be one of the few chances she actually has of having a child. And it would be, I'm sure there are women out there who... had an abortion, and then subsequently tried to have kids, couldn't have it later on in life. I mean, not only the regret that they must feel, it must be awful. Awful. Yeah, you're right. We came across, you know, a story in...

Facebook forum or something like that, where it was a 34-year-old woman who was posting about, should I get an abortion? I just feel like I'm so young to have a child. My partner and I, we've only been together seven years. I mean, I think we have an infantilization of... like kind of 20s and 30s don't we if you get to 34 and you think you're still too young to have a child too young gosh um you're one year away from having a geriatric pregnancy as unpleasant as that term might be for people

It's true. And a lot of people don't realize that. And I think, you know, we're plugged, even on the tube right now in London, there's adverts for IVF. And the Scottish government are actually promoting programs trying to get girls in universities to donate eggs.

for money so that older people can have children. And we're kind of locked into this weird kind of technological dystopian, like, leave it too late because you want to do other things first. And don't worry, we'll fix this technology when you're ready in your 40s. Very few people are told that.

but IVF most times doesn't work. It's very expensive and very hard to go through, especially on a woman's body. It's extremely challenging. We're not told any of this reality. We just promoted it as, don't worry, that's the solution. Once you've kind of done your career thing and you're ready...

to settle down but the structures of society kind of pushes in that way don't they you're kind of by the time you're hitting your 30s you spent most of your 20s in education and then you know going through the grad programs and internships and early career There isn't really, in the structures of society right now, we're not encouraged to settle down earlier and to think about can we push some of that stuff later because we can do it later and we can have, it's easier to have kids earlier.

I think, yeah, that's another thing we have to be talking about and being more honest about. And the statistics, because even after 30, it starts to fall on a 35 and a 40 and trails off. And on that note...

So before we head to Substack where our audience get to ask you their questions, what is the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? I've prepared for this for five years. That is a joke when it's not a joke. I think... I hear a lot right now on the right about the need for restoring a Christian West, for restoring Christian society, especially in the context of immigration is often kind of now used as a buzzword of we want to have a Christian nation.

What I think we're not talking about within that is that a Christian nation is a nation of Christian people. And a lot of us, I don't know if there's a reckoning yet of what that means personally in our personal lives. I think, for example... the Tory party, we saw it kind of fall apart from being a party that valued conservatism. But then when it left that moorings of why, of that kind of basis of faith and Christianity.

It started promoting all sorts of liberal ideals and then eventually just disintegrated as something that doesn't promote conservatism at all over the last 14 years. They were the ones that brought in the prayer bans and pills by post-abortion and various other measures that were very anti-Christian.

And so I think we have to recognize that on the right in the UK, if we are trying to put in conservatism without Christ, that is also just going to be baseless and more or less and drift at some point. I think we have to get back to those Christian ideals.

and apply them in our personal lives first. We can't be out there promoting marriage and family and babies and then have our right-wing politicians sleeping around being unfaithful to their partner and not promoting this in their personal lives. So I think we have a lot of work to do. Good luck with that.

Right. But I think that's why we're failing. We know some of these people. Good luck with that. But I think that's why we're failing. Yeah. I think unless we adopt this properly, wholesale, this is a thing not to get it not too far into, but there are a lot of... uh there are a lot of supposedly

Christian or moral people who are not very Christian or moral, and a lot of non-Christian people who actually do stick with those values. The values are important. That's what really matters. But then we get into a whole argument about where do you get them, blah, blah, blah. Let's say that for another time. We'll just have a stack where we continue the conversation. What is your opinion on how society should deal with cancel culture as a consequence of distasteful but free speech?

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