Nov 4 2024
Calum Muller: Faith, Science, and the Unborn: A Doctor's Perspective on Life
Welcome to another thought-provoking episode of Hearts of Oak, where today we delve deep into the heart of one of the most contentious debates of our time: the right to life. In this episode, we're joined by a distinguished guest, a medical doctor and researcher who has become a pivotal figure in the UK's pro-life movement.
Prepare for an insightful conversation as we explore his transformative journey from a pro-choice stance to becoming an ardent advocate for the unborn, driven by scientific evidence and ethical reasoning. We'll discuss the current cultural landscape in the UK, where despite a prevailing pro-choice sentiment, a new wave of youthful pro-life activism is emerging, challenging the status quo.
This episode promises to unravel:
The ethical and scientific arguments for when life begins.
The role of religious beliefs in the pro-life movement.
Why there's a growing disconnect between UK law and public opinion on abortion.
How the pro-life movement is evolving, engaging with media, politics, and church leaders to drive change.
Join us as we navigate through these complex issues, understanding the motivations behind one man's mission to change hearts and minds, and why he believes now more than ever, the pro-life message needs to be heard.
This is not just a debate; it's a call to action, a challenge to think, and a journey into the heart of what it means to champion life in all its vulnerability and potential.
Tune in, and let's challenge the tide together.
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Interview recorded 31.10.24
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Transcript:
(Hearts of Oak)
And hello Hearts of Oak, thank you so much for joining us once again with a brand new guest, and that is Calum Miller.
Calum, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you for having me
Hearts of Oak
Great to have you, and of course, I was at the March for Life in the UK, which kind of spurred my thinking, and you're a name that I've seen in many different areas, but actually being at that event solidified it.
So I want to get your thoughts on that, the UK pro-life movement, your background, all of that. But people can find you at Dr. Calum Miller on X (formerly Twitter), and of course, callumsblog.com is your blog.
All the links will be in the description whether people are watching or listening; everything is there, so make sure to make use of those links.
But, Calum, your background as a doctor, you're involved, very involved in the pro-life movement.
Maybe I could just step back a little bit and ask you to introduce yourself to our viewers before we get into the actual issue at hand.
Sure, yes. I'm a medical doctor, and I actually became pro-life while I was at medical school.
So I grew up, like most of the UK, just being pro-choice, at least most of Great Britain, at least.
And I think, yeah, it was being at medical school, seeing the reality of life in the womb, seeing the reality of abortion and its impact on the woman as well as the child that convinced me to be pro-life.
So I still work as a doctor.
I'm also a researcher on the topic of abortion and various other bits and pieces, but that's from an ethical, medical, and legal perspective, whatever it might be.
So I try to look at it from every angle and publish on that. And so I've done quite a bit of academic work on the topic as well.
And then I do a lot of work just speaking and writing about this as well, so yeah, I didn't expect to end up here when I started medical school, but that's what I've ended up doing because I think it's one of the most important things that can be spoken about, so here I am.
Maybe ask you what actually changed your mind?
I want to delve into that, your background, and what kind of led you to that.
But what kind of led up to that?
Because most people, I guess, shrug their shoulders, and they think, you know, if it's people's choice, and you want to do this or that.
People don't really think about it in the UK, I don't think, as much as intentionally as maybe in the US, where there are two kind of blocks on each side, and you have heated, and sometimes even constructive arguments.
In the UK, it just seems to be, "Bleh," just kind of shrug your shoulders.
So, what kind of persuaded you? What led you, as you were studying as a doctor, to the position that actually life in the womb matters?
Yeah, it was a number of things, really.
I think being a doctor, you have to think about it at least a little bit.
That's not to say most doctors think about it much or have a well-formed view on it.
But at least in my case, it was something that came up in medical school.
And so that sort of provoked me a bit more into thinking about what I thought about it.
And then also, you know, reading about it, it was very much academic arguments, you know, thinking through the idea of human rights and equality that convinced me.
I thought if humans are equal, then they have equal rights, and that has to include every human.
And, therefore, the main question in abortion is just: Is this a human being?
And I was, you know, I knew from medical school that it was.
And therefore, for me, it was very simple: that if this is a human being, as science teaches, and if every human being is equal, as most of us claim to believe, then it just follows really logically that we should be pro-life and protect the child in the womb just as much as anyone else. And so that was a big part of it.
I think, you know, part of what brought it up, you're right, is globalization which normally makes people—normally it's sort of very progressive Western values going to other parts of the world and making them more liberal.
In my case, I think globalization took me the other direction to a more traditional view because, you know, I grew up in a very sort of insular progressive country, and it was actually exposure to the fact that most people around the world don't agree with this, and most of them are pro-life, that was part of the thing that got me to reconsider in the first place.
So, yeah, it was a mix of a whole bunch of things: experience, looking at the arguments, but at its core, it was really that conviction about human equality, human rights, and seeing that if we really believe in them, then they have to apply to everyone and not just the people that it's convenient for now.
There are two approaches: at the March for Life, you have a strongly Christian approach in that the understanding of the Bible is that we are made in the image of God, and therefore, everyone has value, no matter where they are or who they are; everyone is equal and has value.
But you've also got, as you pointed out, an ethical argument, a philosophical argument, which is a completely different take on it.
What about you as a Christian, then? How did that affect your approach to this idea?
Yeah, it wasn't actually a huge part of what convinced me because, you know, I had Christian convictions before I became pro-life, and I thought that was compatible.
Later on, I realized that Christianity does have a clear position on it, but it was really the arguments about science and philosophy that convinced me primarily.
And I think one of the striking things in that sense is that the Bible doesn't actually say when life begins exactly.
It talks about conception a little bit, and it clearly respects that there is life before birth. And so, you know, at least at some point before birth, life begins.
But of course, fertilization hadn't been discovered when the Bible was written.
And so when people say, you know, you only believe human rights begin or life begins at fertilization because the Bible says so or because of your religion, it's actually the opposite.
The Bible doesn't mention fertilization; no one in religion mentioned fertilization until it was discovered scientifically.
And it was because of that scientific discovery that Christians said, "Oh, OK, so we knew that life was valuable from the beginning because the Bible teaches that life is valuable from the beginning.
But we didn't know when the beginning was. But now that science has shown us when the beginning is, at fertilization, the Christian position, informed by science, tells us that life begins at fertilization and should be protected from that."
And so I think clearly, you know, I think if you believe in Christianity and you believe in science, then there's no way to sort of support abortion.
But in terms of that claim about when life begins, I think that's ultimately a scientific claim, not a religious one.
And so anyone can agree with it.
And if, for some other reason, say you're not religious, you just believe that all human beings are equal and should be protected regardless.
Regardless, if you believe that and you believe in science, you should also be pro-life.
So religion certainly supports the pro-life position in many cases, but it's not needed for it. And so in my own journey, it was not really connected to religion.
It was only later that I sort of united them in that sense.
Okay, let me see where I go in this, because I want to pick up.
Those are two aspects, I think, and it's interesting your view of being a Christian, and yet not necessarily being pro-life.
I mean, I have a, to me, it's a red line as a Christian that actually we speak up, as Proverbs says, for the voiceless, and who has no voice more than the unborn.
Literally, they're not able to speak, and therefore it is up to us to speak up for them.
So for me, even that Proverbs is enough to actually step up. And if no one comes and says, you know, that's not life because of X, Y, and Z, if there's no argument for that side, then surely the flip side has to be that you speak up for that.
And I have, I mean, I've talked to, I grew up Baptist, now in a Pentecostal church, but talked to a lot of C of E vicars who struggle with this and privately have a view, but publicly seem unable to speak.
And it seems to be a fear of what man may say, as opposed to a fear of God.
I mean, what have your conversations been like with different Christian leaders on actually speaking up on this?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think your experience is unusual, especially as someone who goes to an Anglican church. I think we're all, every Anglican is, humiliated by the quality of our leadership, I think, especially at present.
That's not about my church; my church leaders are great, but I think everyone knows at this point that Welby's a bit of a clown, and no one, you know, thinks he has much courage or credibility.
And so certainly, you know, we don't expect anything remotely controversial or that might upset the sort of powers that be from Anglican leaders, but it's not only an Anglican problem.
You know, the only time I've ever heard abortion preached about in a church, as someone who has been going to church most of my life, was I only heard it once, and that was when I was giving a sermon.
And that was an invitation by a very bold pastor because he wanted it to be preached on, and that's the only time I've ever heard it preached on in a UK church.
So this is a huge problem across denominations.
And I think ultimately there's a vicious circle because, you know, people will not know how to speak about abortion in a winsome way.
So they don't speak about it. And therefore, the next generation or the people in the congregations don't know what to think about it.
And then if they don't know what to think about it, they're even less likely to speak about it in future.
And that just sort of reinforces itself. And so I meet quite, you know, the Christian position on this is about as clear as anything could be.
It's like absolutely clear. You know, the evidence from church history and from the Bible for the pro-life view is as good or better than the evidence for the Trinity, which is like a core foundational Christian doctrine.
And yet I meet a lot of Christians, even otherwise orthodox, kind of Bible-believing Christians who just don't know what to think about this issue.
And that is because of this reinforced silence on the issue.
So, I would say that in some cases, it is just cowardice; in many cases, it's just cowardice, but in many cases, it's because the church leader might want to speak about this but genuinely has never seen it spoken about in a way that is convincing, full of grace, and full of compassion, and you know, winsomeness.
And I think in that situation, at the very least, our job is to present to those pastors and church leaders a way of communicating this message that is winsome, that does make sense, that is compassionate and full of grace and the gospel.
And so, yeah, I think, you know, that once we've sort of equipped church leaders with that, then I think we will see which church leaders have a sort of genuine fear that they're willing to overcome once they're equipped and which church leaders are just always going to be too scared, no matter what you do.
And I think there'll always be a mix of both in churches, but we're hoping that, you know, over time, once people are equipped, they'll be able to speak out more, and that a lot of them will be willing to do so.
I'm wondering, is it a cultural issue?
I remember visiting a church in Houston, and in the middle of the sermon, they emphasized the importance of life.
I’ve seen similar moments in other large U.S. churches, where they pause to discuss that life is sacred, including life in the womb, which they believe God has created.
There seems to be a greater focus on the sanctity of life there. In contrast, you’re right—it's rare to come across that in UK churches.
For example, in my own church, KT, the former pastor once issued an apology during a Sunday service.
This happened after J. John, a Church of England canon, was speaking on the Ten Commandments. When he came to "murder," he paused to say that taking the life of the unborn is also murder.
He spoke about it briefly, emphasizing forgiveness at the cross, and then moved on. That Sunday, the church leader made a public apology in case anyone was offended.
But when it comes to weighing offense against addressing the issue of life, I’d prioritize preventing the loss of life over potential offense.
Is this reluctance to speak out part of a cultural issue—a difference between transatlantic perspectives?
Yeah, I mean, as you say, there are some great church leaders in the UK.
I'm not saying every church leader avoids this topic; J. John is a fantastic example of someone who’s been willing to speak about it.
Vaughan Roberts from St. Ebbe’s in Oxford is another example, and there are others, so they’re not the only ones.
We’re very grateful for church leaders like that.
Even among church leaders who are somewhat fearful of addressing this issue, I think there are two main reasons. One is a kind of legitimate worry—misplaced, perhaps, but still legitimate. The other is less defensible.
The legitimate worry is from those who are genuinely fearful that if they speak out on this issue, they will turn away people who are not Christians, making them less open to Christianity.
Of course, Christianity is even more important than the issue of abortion, if we frame it that way.
So, there’s this worry that if someone is turned off from coming to church or listening to anything we say because of this issue, they might never come to believe in the end.
Their concern is for the most important thing.
While I think this worry may be misplaced, I understand it.
Then, there are others who are less concerned about the evangelistic impact and simply worried about, as you say, causing offense.
The Bible doesn’t teach us to go out and deliberately cause offense, but it does tell us to speak the truth. If the truth offends, then so be it. As I mentioned, there are ways to address this issue that are winsome, compassionate, and full of grace.
There are certainly ways of discussing it that lack those qualities and can be genuinely harmful.
But if a church leader is unwilling to even broach the topic in a good, winsome, and compassionate way, then I think there's a real problem.
I would say the U.S. has less of an issue with this, but it’s still present.
Many pastors there avoid discussing it, and there is a lot of confusion. Globally, one might expect church leaders in conservative regions to be more vocal, but even then, the response is mixed.
For example, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, church leaders are very vocal, clear, and forthright about this issue, without fear or hesitation. In parts of the Caribbean—though not everywhere—even where abortion is mostly illegal and Christianity is widespread within a traditional culture, there is often significant hesitation among church leaders to address it.
So, even in traditionally conservative cultures worldwide, the response is mixed."
Okay, let's look at legislation.
Every country will be different, of course. In the UK, there has certainly been a push to extend access to abortion up to birth, depending on certain circumstances.
In contrast, as you look further east in Europe, abortion tends to have more restrictions.
We also have the issue of buffer zones.
Could you update the viewers and listeners on the current situation regarding abortion in the UK?
Yeah, so in the UK, we have a law that, in practice, allows abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks, or six months.
By this point, the baby is quite developed; they’re viable from about 21 to 22 weeks and could survive outside the womb without their mother.
The baby is able to feel pain, has a heartbeat, brain waves, can taste food, and so forth.
They’re very much developed, yet the UK allows abortion up to six months.
If the baby has a disability, the law permits abortion until birth.
Although it specifies a 'serious handicap,' initially intended for life-limiting conditions—where, for example, the baby might only survive a few days—in practice, nearly any disability can justify abortion until birth.
We know of cases where abortions for Down syndrome, for instance, have taken place in the 8th or even the 9th month in the UK.
It’s also important to clarify that, technically, abortion is not fully legal for any reason up to six months.
The law specifies that it’s legal to protect the physical or mental health of the woman. Originally, this was meant to be fairly strict, requiring two doctors to genuinely assess that carrying the baby to term would pose a significant mental or physical health risk.
However, in practice, you might go to the doctor—or sometimes only a nurse—and say you don’t want a baby.
If you indicate that this would cause you emotional difficulty, that counts as a mental health reason, qualifying you for an abortion.
So, in theory, we only have abortion for health reasons or for disability in the UK, but in practice, it’s permitted for almost any reason up to six months.
This is much more permissive than in most of Europe, where abortion is usually allowed only up to 12 weeks, if at all.
For example, Germany has a 12-week limit, and I believe some Scandinavian countries, like Norway and Denmark, also have similar 12-week limits.
Sweden’s limit is 18 weeks, and, as everyone knows, Sweden is considered one of the most progressive countries in the world.
Even they have a limit at 18 weeks, while in the UK, we’re a month and a half beyond that. This makes us an outlier—not only globally but even within Western Europe—as we are far more extreme.
That’s why over 70% of women in the UK believe the law should be stricter than it currently is.
Despite a population that is 95% pro-choice, most people recognize that our law is far too extreme and believe it needs to be tightened
I mean, does the law state when life begins? Because that's what it boils down to. In the UK, if you talk to liberals—or even family members, as I have—they seem to believe the birth canal somehow bestows the properties of life. The moment a baby passes through that point, it’s alive, but 20 seconds before, it’s not.
I think that’s not really a scientific definition of when life begins; it's more of a positional argument rather than one grounded in the actual question of life.
So, in the UK, is there any definition of when life begins? Because that seems to be the central issue.
Yeah, not really.
I mean, in terms of when a child is fully protected, it would be when birth is complete.
There has actually been a bit of legal debate about partial birth abortion, which is when the baby is half delivered.
You deliver the legs and body, and then the head is still just inside the birth canal, and an abortion is performed at that stage of pregnancy.
It’s absolutely barbaric and grotesque, but it seems to be legal in the UK.
So even halfway through delivery, it appears that an abortion can still be performed, meaning that the baby is not considered a full legal person who is protected at that point.
The law does actually define pregnancies in two different ways.
When measuring the time limit for abortion, it states that it is up to 24 weeks.
This is actually measured from the last period of the woman, which is two weeks before conception.
In that sense, it doesn't define pregnancy as beginning at conception; instead, it says pregnancy begins two weeks before conception, at the last period.
However, when defining what abortion is versus contraception—what's the difference between contraception and abortion—the law defines pregnancy as beginning at implantation, which occurs a week or two after conception.
The reason for this is that there are forms of contraception that act after fertilization, technically causing very early abortions.
This makes doctors and contraceptive manufacturers very unhappy because it means they would be subject to more regulation.
Therefore, they prefer to classify all of these drugs as contraceptives, since the law is less strict about contraceptives.
So, in the UK, the law defines a legal person as only being recognized once birth is fully completed.
And it defines pregnancy in two different ways: either from the last period or from implantation, neither of which is conception, which is the scientifically accurate beginning of life.
So, the law in the UK is a total mess; it's completely contradictory and inconsistent.
All I can say is that while the law might not define it clearly, if I were asked in my medical school exams when a human organism begins, I would say that it starts at conception.
There's only one answer that would be remotely acceptable, and that would be fertilization.
That's the scientifically obvious answer.
I mean, how is it that someone can go through the medical field?
I went through aerospace, so it’s very different.
But in the medical field, how is it that someone decides to become a doctor?
They must have the intellectual ability and, more importantly, the desire to do good; they want to help.
That’s what they want to do in their career.
I scratch my head thinking about someone who decides they want to be a doctor. What do you want to do?
Well, I like to kill babies.
Is that really an option on the list of motivations?
How does someone move from wanting to help people to that being a part of their profession?
As someone in a non-medical field, it’s quite confusing.
Yeah, I think part of the answer is that doctors themselves and some of the public have an unreasonably inflated view of doctors.
You know, a lot of doctors do a lot of what they do for goodwill and get into it with good intentions.
But it's also a highly prestigious career that earns a decent salary; there are many reasons why people want to be a doctor other than because it helps people.
And to be honest, if you really want to help people, there are much more effective things you can do.
You could go into banking, earn a lot of money, and then donate it all; that would actually have an impact hundreds or thousands of times bigger than being a doctor.
So, that's not to say all doctors are just in it for the money and the prestige, but there's a lot of that, and there's certainly a lot of pride in the medical profession.
So, I don't think we should just have this view that doctors are just saintly people.
They might be better than average morally, but that's not saying much, and certainly not all of them are better than average.
In terms of the ones who might get into it for reasons of goodwill and good intentions, I think it's best reflected by there's a paper on second-trimester abortion.
by what's her name, Lisa—I've forgotten her surname, I'm afraid—Lisa Harris, I think it is, and she writes a paper on second-trimester abortion, and she says we need to stop being dishonest about this; this is, in some ways, a horrendous procedure.
And she describes it; she talks about, for example, when she was doing an abortion and she pulled the legs off the baby, and at the same time, she felt her own baby kicking inside of her because she was pregnant while she was doing this abortion. And she said, like, tears were flowing down her face, and this sort of thing.
It was a very visceral experience.
And so, she's, in that sense, quite open and honest about what abortion involves, and she even says explicitly in that article that abortion is violence.
She doesn't hold back; she says abortion is clearly violence, but she says it's an even greater violence to force women to stay pregnant against their will.
And so, I don't know if every abortion practitioner thinks of it that way.
Probably not.
Probably many of them are in total denial and just try to sort of deny the fact that they're doing anything violent.
They're probably just trying to treat it as no big deal.
But when you get an honest doctor who really knows what they're doing and still does it, I think that has to be something like the justification that they think, "Yes, of course, this is violence, and it's horrible, but it's even worse to force a woman to stay pregnant, and therefore, it's the lesser of two evils."
So that's how some people would think of it, at least.
I want to get your kind of view on the pro-life movement in the UK.
You've been very heavily involved in campaigning for that, being a high-profile activist, and you emceed the March for Life event a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago in London.
And I'm embarrassed to say that was the first one I attended, and I attended the seminars in the morning and then went for the march in the afternoon to Parliament Square. But 10 years of that, do you want to give us an insight?
I mean, half of our viewers are US viewers; I think it'd be good for them to also understand what the situation is in the UK, what your experiences have been being involved in the pro-life movement, trying to win the public over, win public support, win political support, engaging in the media.
Give us an insight into what that journey has been like.
Yeah, so I certainly wasn't there from the beginning of the March for Life.
I've been maybe three or four times now to the UK march, a few times in other countries.
I'm told that it began very small; I think it began with just a couple of dozen people in Birmingham about 10 years ago, and then, really incredibly, it has expanded to thousands and thousands in London now.
I know other countries do it a bit differently; they do hundreds of marches across the country.
So every country does it a bit differently.
We have a big one in London each year, and it's been incredible to see how that's grown over the years and how many young people are involved.
It's not just some fading generation that's gradually losing momentum and losing ground. If you go to the march, it's absolutely full of young people, and I think it's growing each year.
And so, yeah, that's been hugely encouraging.
And I think it's interesting because what the abortion lobby is trying to do is to say that this is a settled issue, it's a decided issue, and that there's no room for debate.
And they could probably get away with that for many years because there wasn't really much pushback for a good long time.
And now, I think we're at the point where sort of teenage and young people's rebelliousness is actually getting, you know, the new conservatism is actually being pro-life.
That's the thing; we've had in this country for 50 or 60 years, and people who want to sort of grow up questioning things and going against the establishment are increasingly recognizing that the establishment and the older generations are pro-abortion and that they're trying to maintain that at all costs.
And so, I think there is an increasing generation of young people that are beginning to ask questions.
And naturally, the establishment's getting very nervous about that and trying to shut it down and pretend there's nothing to debate.
And so, yeah, I'm excited about what the next few years might show.
There's some polling, and I don't know, it's a little bit mixed, but there is some evidence that the youngest people in the UK are the most pro-life.
That's not to say the majority are pro-life; it's still tough being a pro-life person at university.
But it does seem to be that the youngest generation is more pro-life than any other, and so our hope is that this will build over the next few years, and hopefully, we'll be able to have even more significant conversations about what is really good for women, what is really good for children, what is really good for society, especially as we see the costs of not having any kids—the economic costs and other things. We're gradually seeing that that's going to cause huge economic problems.
I don't know if anyone in my generation is actually convinced they're going to get a pension when they're in their 60s or 70s. I'm certainly not.
And that's because we don't have enough kids.
And so, I think as those problems increase and get worse, and the economic reality of that hits home, I think a lot of people will be wondering, did we make some mistakes when it came to suppressing childbearing, breaking up families, and encouraging people not to have them?
I mean, isn't it, and I was really pleasantly surprised by the number of certainly younger people at not only the event at the beginning of the day but also in the march.
And you realize there is hope when you see that, a different generation actually standing up for life.
But I mean, in every generation, faces its own issues, and in this generation, it's an issue of it's about me; it's about putting off having children later in life, putting off commitment, actually zero commitment; kind of do what you want.
And that different, I guess, focus on life is more on the individual as opposed to collective, much less responsibility towards society, and much more on "I can do what I want, and screw the world" type of thing.
That is a difficult concept to bring into this, which is about thinking of others, so how do you kind of marry that with this maybe a more selfish attitude to this issue, which has to be selfless because you're thinking of someone else.
It's tough.
And, you know, there are arguments that abortion is bad, even if you're self-interested.
You know, the mental health evidence is quite clear that if a woman has an abortion, she's more likely to be anxious, more likely to be suicidal, and more likely to do drugs and alcohol and all sorts of things.
So even from a selfish perspective, abortion is bad for women and for people making that decision.
On the other hand, you know, those arguments haven't persuaded so far. Maybe that's because the establishment sort of denies that evidence, or maybe it's because people just aren't motivated in that moment by theoretical knowledge of what their mental health might be like in the future.
It's more of a panic decision. It's more of a, you know, freaking out.
"My life's going to be over as I know it," and I just have to get rid of this and change this situation.
I'm not thinking about, you know, potential mental health outcomes 20 years down the line.
I don't know which of those is the reason that those arguments haven't persuaded. But for that reason, it's always going to be a challenge in a culture that is primarily about the individual and about doing what you desire and what you want, forgetting about your responsibility to others and the need to care for others.
I think it will always be challenging to get rid of abortion in that context. So we don't really know how to solve it in that sense.
We're hoping that people will wake up. Of course, there is a significant sentiment of helping others; you know, some people call it social justice, while others refer to it by different names.
However, this sense of societal responsibility among young people isn't completely dead.
They can be very selfish in some respects, and then the next week they’ll spend all of their time at a protest for something that helps society—or at least something they think helps society—in some way. Some of that, I'm sure, is grandstanding; some of it is virtue signaling. However, I think a lot of it is genuine sympathy.
I believe that when people spend their Saturdays marching for Palestine, whatever you think of that issue or whoever you think is in the right, many of the young people in those marches genuinely believe that there are people suffering and that it is their responsibility to spend some of their valuable time speaking for them.
And so, in that sense, the sort of societal duty and that sense of duty is not gone; it’s just very selectively targeted nowadays.
There's not a general sense that with everyone around me, with my family, with my neighbors, and with my society, every decision I make has to be something that contributes to them and their flourishing.
It's more like, okay, in most areas it's all about me, and I should do what makes me happy and follow my heart.
But then there are some things that are just so bad that I have to, you know, give a bit of my time to.
I think it's just much more targeted in that way rather than a complete sense of, you know, irresponsibility.
So the question is, how can we challenge the sort of channel those remaining desires to do good and to show that they apply to all of society and all of life, and not just to a few select issues?
I think once we are able to build that sort of virtue and responsibility in a more global sense, then we might be in a better position to fix this issue as well.
How do you look at this from a campaigning point of view?
There are many angles you could take, and where you focus is important.
Do you look at the media and push the message through that?
Do you focus on MPs in the political sphere?
Do you look at the church and engage with it?
There are many aspects you could consider using for influence.
So how do you see the movement, the breakthrough, or the focus for you personally?
Yeah, I think it's always going to be a mix of those.
I think any societal movement requires getting all the different sectors on board.
Even if you look at, you know, people pushing the other way, even when it seems hopeless—in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where almost everyone is pro-life, the abortion industry globally will still target politicians, doctors, the media, and even church leaders.
Even though they know that almost all the church leaders are against them, they will try to get church leaders on board with them just so they can say this is not an issue where, if you're Christian, you're pro-life, or if you're Muslim, you're pro-life.
You can be a Christian or a Muslim and still support abortion, and therefore try to shift the population that way.
So, I’d say it involves all of them.
But I think the thing that has struck me about public opinion on abortion and how pro-life movements have succeeded around the world is that it is very, very difficult for a pro-life movement to succeed without having, at the very least, a core base of enthusiastic supporters among Christians or Muslims.
I think that's just the reality.
You know, if you look at the U.S. pro-life movement, yes, 25 percent of atheists in America are pro-life, according to polls.
And that's significant; that's a lot of people who are totally non-religious and pro-life. But when you look at people who are actively engaged in pro-life campaigning or volunteering at a pregnancy help center, or whatever it might be, the overwhelming majority of them—about 99 percent—are Christian.
There are some exceptions; obviously, that's why it's only 99 percent. I have some great atheist friends. F
or example, Monica Snyder, who runs Secular Pro-Life, does a fantastic job. Everyone's convinced she's secretly a Christian, and I can tell you from knowing her that it's far from the case.
There are great people like that, but the reality is that 99 percent of pro-life people who are actually doing something in the U.S. are Christians. Therefore, it's very difficult to even make a start unless you have a core group of Christians who are willing to take action.
And so, you know, we can still affect the politics.
At the moment in the UK, they're trying to legalize abortion up until birth.
Even without the church being engaged, some of our groups working in politics have been able to stop that.
And so I'm not saying we should just forget everything until we have the church on board, because we can do a lot even without them.
But I think in order to make really significant change long term, I think the place to start has to be the church because that's where people are
