The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 83 – Frank Beckwith

Episode 83: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

Dr. Jeff interviews Dr. Frank Beckwith, a Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University. The conversation begins with Dr. Beckwith’s tenure at Baylor and the success of its philosophy program. The primary focus of the interview is the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Dr. Beckwith discusses his influential 2007 book, Defending Life, which provides a philosophical, non-theological defense of the pro-life position. He analyzes the legal and historical flaws in the original Roe v. Wade decision, explains the implications of the Dobbs ruling returning abortion law to the states, and speculates on the future of legislative battles in red, blue, and purple states.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show is available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, or wherever you get your podcast. Please take a moment to go review the show so more people can find out about it, because this is the show where I interview major thought leaders who show that worldview changes everything.

My guest for today’s podcast is professor and philosopher, Dr. Frank Beckwith. Dr. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy and Church state studies at Baylor University. He teaches undergraduate students, graduate students, doctoral students, and has been published in all kinds of places. He’s a major writer of academic articles and books, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Journal of Medical Ethics, the Journal of Social Philosophy. He’s also written a number of books on all kinds of issues from law to politics to pro-life.

And in our conversation, we’re going to talk about Dr. Beckwith’s responses to the Dobbs decision and some of the work that he did to help make good arguments for pro-life viewpoints in his book Defending Life. Please welcome Dr. Frank Beckwith to the show. Dr. Frank Beckwith, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (01:26):
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:28):
Well, you’ve been one of my favorite philosophers, and you are also a professor at Baylor University. I got my master’s degree at Baylor University, so I’m a Baylor grad. Sic ‘em Bears. And you’ve taught there now, how many years?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (01:42):
This, let’s see, beginning in fall of 2022, it’ll be my 20th year at Baylor.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:49):
20th year. So in 20 years. So your older students now are going to be in their early forties and they’ve got careers of their own, and the impact that you’ve been able to have through teaching in that program? It just seems extraordinary to me.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (02:05):
It is. I mean, I think not so much about my undergrads, although I’ve had many undergrads, some of whom have gone on to have great careers, but we have a doctoral program in philosophy at Baylor, and the thing that I find just astonishing is how well our PhD graduates have done in terms of their placement, where they’re at in terms of their professional status and appointments.

We’ve had philosophers who have left our program and have become department chairs, university deans. I mean, one of the things about Baylor, at least in terms of our graduate program, we have this sort of vision of placing our graduates in positions of leadership at Christian institutions. And so that’s I think one of the most gratifying things at Baylor.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:57):
You’ve got historically Baptist University, it’s super famous now. Everybody wants to go there. All of the students I talk to, they all want to go to Baylor. And as I think through my time there, I think my fellow graduate students and I had a worry that having gone to Baylor would make our careers more difficult because of its Baptist orientation.

In fact, my undergraduate advisor, when I told him I was going to Baylor because I could go there, I could teach speech and coach the debate team and go for free. As I was involved in the collegiate debate program, he said, Baylor is nothing but a neo-fascist finishing school. Those were his exact words about the school.

And I mean, we had different relationships with our professors in those days. You could talk back more and not get in trouble. And so I kind of talked back at him a little bit, but I just remember thinking, is this the end of my career? But what you’re telling me is these students are coming out of this program and they’re really rising to the top.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (04:19):
Now, some of the other departments have done very well also, but I can only speak for philosophy. I think one of the things that I guess we didn’t really expect, but it’s worked out this way, that a lot of Christian institutions trust us in terms of the sort of graduates that we’re putting out, people that are committed Christians, that they are looking to be affiliated with an institution that has a mission, but they also want to be really good scholars.

And so we’ve been very fortunate in having grad students come in who have published in the leading journals, who have received contracts from major publishers. And so we’ve developed this kind of interesting niche. Our graduates mostly get hired at Christian institutions, but we’ve had some hired at secular institutions not too long ago. We’ve had a few at state institutions. We have two right now at Air Force Academy who are on the faculty there.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:25):
Yeah, I love it. I’m very glad to hear that. And we could probably talk Baylor all day, but I really wanted to, in the time that we have together, talk about the Dobbs decision. Now, a little bit of background for people who are watching or listening is Frank. You wrote a book many years ago called Defending Life, and it was, I hope I’m describing this accurately because it’s been a long time since I read it, but it was formative for me in making public arguments that have a strong philosophical grounding defending life.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (06:12):
I published it in 2007 with the Cambridge University Press, which was really important for my career. One of the two top presses are Oxford and Cambridge. I was pleasantly surprised when they sent me a contract and made me the offer, but the purpose of the book was to offer a sophisticated defense of the pro-life position that did not appeal to theology or scripture. I do think that you can make theological and scriptural arguments. Of course, I obviously have done that in other venues, but this book was really presenting to a more secular public. This is why pro-lifers hold the views that they do.

And so in the book, I present a brief analysis of why you can even argue about abortion, and then I talk about the legal cases. That time there was obviously no Dobbs. It was Roe v, Wade and Casey V. Planned Parenthood. And then for the remainder of the book, mostly dealing with philosophical arguments for abortion rights and making a case as to why they fail. And the book has done very well for an academic book. I think it’s in its fifth printing.

(07:29):
It is probably the most cited pro-life academic book in the literature. It’s helped me get a lot of citations on Google Scholar. But the other thing is that since Dobbs has come out, I’ve actually approached Cambridge about doing a revised edition, and they’ve invited me to make a proposal.

So I am confident, although nothing is for certain, but I am confident, given how well the book did before that, they will allow me to do a second edition, which will deal with not only Dobbs, but there’s been a lot of other things written since then. The climate in America has changed. The level of discourse is not as polite as it was 15 years ago. So there are going to be aspects of my case that are going to be slightly different, and I’ll have to also respond to critics. People have written critical reviews of the book.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:27):
Yes. Well, all of that is I think that’s just fascinating, and I’m so glad you have the opportunity to do that. I didn’t know how to say this, but I think your book has been extraordinarily influential in the way that people think about life philosophically, but also legally. When you and I first met, in fact, you just went to law school on top of having your doctorate in philosophy, you went to law school because you wanted to master the legal process or the legal arguments and so forth.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (09:01):
Yeah, 11% for my PhD. My wife let me go to law school. I went to Wash U in St. Louis and earned a degree, which they no longer offer there anymore, called the Master of Juridical studies where I took most of the required curriculum. And then, but unlike a regular law degree, I had to write a dissertation, and it was basically an academic degree in law. And it’s, at least in terms of professionally, it was one of the best decisions I’d made. It opened up a lot of doors.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:29):
Yeah, yeah. Well, when I talked to elected officials on any issue, the main question they ask me is, can you give me that argument without Bible verses? Because I need to be able to make it to people who don’t see the Bible as a source. Now you can use the logic that flows from the Bible, but if you start quoting scripture verses from what people are telling me, it makes your case weaker.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (10:00):
That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:00):
From the public eye.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (10:02):
That’s right. I mean, you have to consider your audience. I mean, think about the model of St. Paul on Mars Hill. The Apostle Paul is preaching to an Athenian audience that is not Jewish. They don’t accept the Hebrew scriptures. And so he says, I’m going to tell you about this temple, this unknown God that you have a temple to. And of course, he basically describes God as the creator and quotes from That’s right. From their poets.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:36):
Greek poets. That’s right.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (10:38):
But interestingly, earlier in the same chapter, Acts chapter 17, Paul is in a synagogue. He doesn’t have that strategy. He has a different strategy, and that tells us something about how Christians ought to interact. If you’re with people that don’t share our high view of scripture, you’re going to have to find other ways to speak to them. And I think Paul’s the model.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:03):
Yeah, yeah. Start with where people are. That’s right. And then move them toward truth. Well, this is a lot of fun to have the opportunity to sort of process through the Dobbs case ruling that the Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey decisions were wrongly decided that they are unconstitutional, and that now we’ve got to take a different approach.

So you can’t use the courts to bypass Congress. Congress makes the laws, and now each state is having to make all of these decisions. I’d love for you to just talk about Frank. When you first heard, and we all sort of had a preview, because this decision was leaked, but when you were in law school, it was about the time. When was that?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (12:05):
That was 2000, 2001.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:07):
Okay.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (12:08):
So over 20 years ago.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:09):
That was about the time when Samuel Alito was being nominated.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (12:15):
At that time, Alito was a federal appellate court judge, I believe in the third circuit. I’m not sure. It was a couple of years later that George W. Bush nominated him and he was confirmed. But yeah, so when I went to law school, I actually took a course called Reproductive Control Seminar, which was taught by a professor named Susan Appleton, who was very strongly pro-abortion, and we went over, it was a course entirely on the abortion cases. And she was actually a very good professor, even though she and I didn’t agree, she was very fair-minded.

And I will tell you, I got the highest grade in the class, and I got an award for it, which was for me, I really spoke well of her. I mean, she was, but yeah, so when I went to law school, I actually got to meet Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She visited a WashU Law school, and I heard her speak, and I actually spoke to her for about five, 10 minutes afterwards. And even though I don’t agree with her judicial philosophy, it was an honor to be able to meet a member of the Supreme Court.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:28):
Yeah, yeah. So way back then is when some of these things were starting to be decided, Samuel Alito was on. He’s written a lot of decisions, but he’d been the lead author on a lot of decisions. But would you say this is the most consequential decision that he’s made?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (13:46):
Oh, yes. Yeah, by far. No matter who would’ve written it, it would’ve been the most consequential for their career. So what makes it so amazing to me is that you have to go back to Roe v. Wade. So let’s go back to Roe, and why was that controversial to begin with? Well, justice Harry Blackman, who wrote the majority in Ro, had to, if he wanted to get a right to abortion found in the Constitution, he had to make a case for it.

So how do you make a case for something that’s actually not in the Constitution? So you read the Bill of Rights, there’s nothing that explicitly says that there’s a right to abortion. There is a right to freedom of speech or religious free exercise. To do that, he has to say that there are enumerated rights. Now, what’s an unenumerated right? Well, it’s a right that’s not written down, and you could have a right that’s not written down. So for example, there are assumptions that are made in the very existence of a legal regime. So imagine, for some strange reason, the state of Colorado said, we’re going to make marriage illegal.

(15:05):
Even though there is no right to marriage in the Constitution. The Supreme Court, I think would rightfully say, no, in order to have a human civilization, people have to have the right to join together and beget children and to create families. This is just part of what we presuppose as part of the infrastructure of our civilization and every civilization. So I know a lot of legal conservatives want to say, there are no enumerated rights. I think that’s a mistake. I think that there are like that, and they’re part of what Lito calls our nation’s traditions in history.

(15:48):
So what Justice Blackman did in Roe v. Wade, he said, well, there’s this unenumerated right to abortion that’s tied to another unenumerated right, the right of privacy. Well, where do they get that? Well, from a case called Griswold verse, Connecticut, which said that there’s a fundamental right to contraception.

And so the problem though with abortion is that unlike contraception, and in Griswold, the court tied it to the intimacy of married life, and you can sort of see that. Yeah. So there could be an un enumerated right to that. But here’s the problem with abortion. There’s a third party, the fetus, it’s not a right that’s simply exercised in terms of a self-regarding act. It involves a being whose nature we share.

(16:42):
So what does Blackman do? He says that the court is not going to decide whether he says, well, experts disagree about what life begins. So the court at this point in the development of man’s knowledge is not a position to speculate. So he basically kicks the can down the road. He says that we’re not to deal with this, and besides all the laws that prohibited abortion, because remember that when Roe V was decided in 1973, if you just went back one decade to 63, every state in the United States prohibited abortion in some form or another. In fact, very few exceptions, virtually all of them had life of the mother exceptions.

But in the mid sixties, early seventies, states start decriminalizing abortion, but not everywhere. There were maybe 12, 13 states that had allowed for liberalization, but with the exception of New York and Colorado, virtually all of them were still quite conservative in what they permitted. So what does Blackman do to get a right to abortion? He says, well, the anti-abortion laws that were in place for nearly a hundred years in the US were originally put in place to protect women from dangerous operations, not to protect unborn life. What we’ve learned since that decision, in fact, he relied, and this is something Alito brings up in Dobbs.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:21):
For like 15 pages.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (18:22):
That’s right. So he points out what Alito points out is that black men relied on two articles for the whole history of American abortion law. They were written by a lawyer named Sarah Means, who was an attorney for the National Abortion Rights Action League.

(18:41):
And so Alito points out in Dobbs, that entire grounding of the purpose of abortion laws was fabricated. That in fact, if you go back and look at the reasons why those laws were put in place, they were put there primarily to protect unborn life, and of course, also to protect women from illegal and dangerous operations. But they were primarily there to defend and protect unborn human beings.

And so part of the Dobbs opinion by Alito is to show that the entire grounding of Roe v. Wade was flawed, that the historical arguments were entirely fabrications, and most people who were scholars at the time knew that. And so much of what Alito relies on in terms of scholarship, a lot of us have known about for a long time. In fact, a lot of the scholars that Alito cites, in his opinion, I cited in defending life 15 years ago. But I wasn’t unique. I mean, there were lots of other people who did the same thing. So a lot of this is stuff that people have known about for quite some time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:57):
Yes. And it’s probably a good idea because this is so consequential for people who are watching or listening to find that decision and read it. And it’s depending on how you print it out, it’s 80 pages including all of the citations, I guess.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (20:18):
Yeah. And of course, legal opinion, Supreme Court opinions, it’s 80 pages, but the words are big. So I tell it to my students, I teach several law classes at Baylor, and I tell them when I said, it says 75 pages, but really, you can really breeze through this.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:36):
The words are big as in the type sizes.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (20:38):
That’s right. Not length of words. There are some long words, but generally, yeah, typeset is pretty large.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:43):
I think people will be surprised at the fact that they can read it. Now on this show, we’ve had different people who’ve been involved in the pro-life movement, some of whose focus is caring for moms who are in unplanned pregnancies, others who are more focused on the debunking abortion arguments. But in the time that we have, I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about what this likely means for the future of laws related to abortion in the United States.

It seems like we’re sort of moving from a nation where we are one of the most permissive along with North Korea. China, not that I’m trying to be hyperbolic. That’s literally the case. There are only a handful of nations with laws that were as liberal as ours now to where we’re in the different states. Anyway, you’re going to be a little bit more aligned with what most other nations have in terms of their abortion law. But I’d love to just hear you speculate about that.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (21:58):
That’s right. So what Roe v Wade essentially did, excuse me, not Roe v. Wade, Dobbs essentially did, was to say that there is no constitutional right to abortion. But that doesn’t mean that states can’t have liberal laws, as you alluded to. So what I think you’re going to find, different states are going to be all over the place. So states like California, New York, probably Colorado states that tend to be more blue rather than red are going to have more liberal abortion laws. In fact, I think New York’s most recent law, which they put in place anticipating Roe v. Wade being overturned, is actually more radical than Roe v. Wade.

(22:41):
And I suspect that’s the case in California, although I’ve not read their statute. So what you’ll have is fights in every state debates in different states. Now, certain states like Texas, Mississippi states that tend to be more red, you’re going to probably have greater limitations on the right to abortion. Interesting cases will be the more purple states, the ones that may have more liberal leadership or divided leadership.

But the state population is, let’s say more red, maybe Pennsylvania. That’s an interesting case. So Pennsylvania, where you have people that the state typically will vote lean a little bit liberal, but generally on moral issues, most of the state accepting Pittsburgh and Philadelphia tends to be more like Alabama. In fact, it reminds me of an old saying by, I think it was James Carville who said that I don’t I, I do have a Carville impression.

(23:47):
I’m not going to try it here, but Carville said that. I’ll explain Pennsylvania to you. It’s two New York’s with an Alabama in between. Yeah. So there’re going to be states like that where there are going to be really big debates, and it will probably involve some kind of compromise at the end of the day because political officials will want to sort of move past the issue. And then you’ll have cases like Michigan, which is a lot like Pennsylvania, where in this, right now, I think we have an attorney general and governor who are both very strongly.

But there’s a law that now because Roe v. Wade has been overturned a law v wade that severely restricts abortion that they don’t want to enforce, but they probably don’t have the numbers in the legislature to actually write a new law. So what they’re doing, my understanding is the attorney general is actually going to the Supreme Court of Michigan making the argument that the law actually is inconsistent with Michigan’s constitution.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:58):
The attorney general for Michigan.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (24:59):
From Michigan. Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:00):
Wow. Okay.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (25:01):
So it’s one of those things where there may be something in the Michigan Constitution that maybe has a vague right of privacy, and she may want to argue, oh, that implies the right to abortion. Something like that was done actually in Kansas, I think about five or six years ago, Kansas, of all places, actually, their Supreme Court says that there’s a Kansas constitutional to abortion, and right now there’s in Kansas, I think, a referendum to try to have a constitutional amendment to overturn that Kansas Supreme Court opinion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:35):
Yeah. So now instead of having one national battle, so to speak, you’ve got 50 state battles. Talk to Colorado’s, this weird mix of libertarian and liberal. So it almost wouldn’t surprise anybody who’s lived here for a while that Colorado was a battleground in the legalization of abortion to begin with.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (26:05):
I think it was the first state to liberalize abortion, I think in ‘67.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:10):
Yeah. Okay. So talk to people in states like Colorado or other states because there’s going to be a difference. Arkansas is going to have a different kind of battle. Kansas, it’s probably going to have some changeover in their leadership, and they’re going to have a different kind of battle. But then you’ve got states like Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, really any other, most New England states, California. Then you’ve got California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada. It’s going to be a very different kind of issue.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (26:49):
I even think there’s going to be differences between, let’s say a Colorado and a California, in this regard. You mentioned Colorado’s libertarian leaning. I think pro-lifers will have greater success in a place like Colorado for things like conscious protection for physicians or less draconian regulations on crisis pregnancy centers simply because of the libertarian intuitions that people have.

I mean, what I mean by that is that Libertarians who may be, let’s say pro-abortion, they also would be inclined to protect physicians who don’t want to participate in abortions because they hold a very strong view of personal liberty. And they would also extend that to physicians. On the other hand, people that tend to be more kind of progressive left of center, they see abortion as healthcare, and this is why they actually, if you’ve been, I just noticed this was actually brought to my attention about a month ago.

I was at a conference and another pro-life professor told me, she said, if you ever noticed, you don’t hear the word pro-choice anymore. It’s now access to abortion. And I go, I noticed it. She said, the reason for that is that if they use the language of pro-choice, that means that choice would also extend to people that don’t want to cooperate with it, like the physician or the nurse. And so they want them to be coerced to cooperate because they believe that this is a good.

(28:23):
So I think in certain places like Colorado, it’s going to be conscious protection, will probably be, have a greater chance of being protected. I would even say places like Massachusetts and maybe even maybe Connecticut, just because there’s this older kind of religious culture. A lot of Catholics live there. So to give an example.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:48):
Congregationalists.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (28:49):
That’s right. So Massachusetts actually, the year I think that Colorado passed, I think it was 2012 or may have been 2016, there was something on the ballot for a right to physician assisted suicide. Massachusetts didn’t vote for it. And you think, well, Massachusetts is really liberal. What happened? Well, it’s because they still have a lot of that residual religious culture there. So at least that’s my theory on it. But things change.

But I do think you’re going to have different fights in different states, and I think in certain states like California and New York, I think the battle’s really going to be over whether Christian institutions or even non-Christian institutions that let’s say share pro-life values. Are they going to be coerced by the, to cooperate whether pro-life physicians and nurses and other healthcare personnel, are they going to be given the liberty to say, no, I won’t cooperate. That’s, I think, going to be the battle in those places.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:55):
So in a place like Colorado, we could start with something like conscience, protecting the conscience, objections based on conscience, and then move from there to abortion facility regulations. Maybe. I’m just trying to think of what the path is toward having a more pro-life view in a state where you’re not likely to get an actual limit on the number of weeks in utero where abortions.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (30:26):
I think that’s right. I do think the matter now is protecting our institutions, private schools, hospitals, healthcare facilities, physicians and nurses, and then crisis pregnancy centers. We saw this attempt, I think a year or two ago in California, the California legislature signed by the governor that basically would’ve hamstrung crisis pregnancy centers from speaking their views. In fact, I think it was a requirement that CPCs actually had to refer.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:06):
I remember this case. Yeah, it was from California.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (31:10):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:10):
Yes, I remember the case, but the Supreme Court ruled on that.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (31:14):
That’s right. And they ruled in favor of the CPCs as a form of coerced speech.

Dr. Jeff Myers (31:20):
So that’s actually a legitimate way to approach the issue as well. Yeah. Did you ever think this is going to happen in your lifetime, that it will be overturned?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (31:31):
I mean, there was a part of me that hoped, and I would’ve never, I mean, I remember when Dobbs was decided. I mean, I remember where I was. So I was actually in the Dallas airport waiting to board my flight to Waco. I had just given a couple of talks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I was sitting next to a professor from Cal Baptist who was at the same conference, an economist.

And we were sitting there and we saw up on the screen, Roe v. Wade is overturned, and he texted his daughter who had read my book, Defending Life, and he said, Roe v Wade is overturned. And I’m sitting next to the guy who wrote that book that you read about. And so I actually was choked up about it. It was moving. But the thing that I turned to him and I said, Andy, do you realize that Roe v Wade began here in Dallas?

(32:31):
It was a case involving a woman, Norma McCorvey, in Texas, and the attorney that was representing the state was a gentleman named Wade, who was the district attorney of Dallas, who would’ve prosecuted Lee Harvey Oswald if he had lived. So I mean, it was interesting to be actually in the place where it began, and to hear the news there. I think it’s going to be interesting, Jeff, in terms of how it’s going to change the way we talk about this, because the other side on this has never really had to defend itself in public in a way that meets the pro-life arguments head on.

So we’re going to see in legislatures all over the country, debates, assemblymen, senators, attorney generals, governors actually making a case in public, and it’s going to have to be recorded and it’ll be on YouTube. And I think that, I don’t know where it’s going to lead to. I mean, I think we have the better arguments. I think we have the right case. I think we have the correct moral position. Is the country ready to accept that? So I don’t know. I mean, this is uncharted territory.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:58):
Help somebody who’s watching or listening right now. And I know a lot of people like to listen to the show when they’re riding around in the car or So I want to give some hooks to, hang on, hang on to, so let’s say somebody’s out for a walk right now, and they actually have a friend who says, oh, this is about access to healthcare. That’s what it is. That’s the core issue. So they say that over lunch and you’ve got just a few minutes to give them a different perspective. What do you say?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (34:29):
Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you how I’ve responded to that in my own conversations. Are you saying that pregnancy is a disease? Because to say that abortion is healthcare is to say that pregnancy is an illness. Now, it’s not to say that people don’t get ill when they’re pregnant, but that doesn’t mean that pregnancy itself is the illness. You can imagine when a woman finds out she’s pregnant, does she have the same response that she has when she finds out she has cancer or COVID-19? She sometimes is troubled by it. It’s maybe unexpected. She may have joy. I don’t know of anyone who’s ever gotten cancer who’s been overjoyed.

(35:15):
So there’s something about, yeah. So again, I think that by raising it that way, it’s to say that there’s another party involved with this. And that’s why we respond much differently to a pregnancy than we do to all sorts of other physical states that we can be in. And we clearly don’t do that if we are diagnosed with a tumor or something or we find out we have arthritis or something like that. So there’s something different about the question of abortion, and it also means, in a weird way, if in fact, if want, if let’s say someone bites the bullet and says, yes, pregnancy is a disease. That means that every single human being who’s ever come into existence is an illness.

(36:11):
I mean, that just, it’s an astonishing claim that none of us is entitled to be alive, that the only reason why we’re alive is that somebody willed us, that we’re not gifts to be received but objects under the total will of another. And I think it’s dehumanizing. And that’s not to say, again, that people don’t struggle over this, that there aren’t difficult pregnancies. Not suggesting that at all.

But I think that we have to look at pregnancy as it really is. It’s the bringing into existence, or it’s the existence being has been brought into existence that is radically dependent on us. And that radical dependency doesn’t end after birth. That’s right. And it means there’s something about parenthood that just is different from other relationships.

So I mean, think about the ways in which we actually use parenthood to describe other relationships. We use analogies. We say he treats him like a father treats a son, she mothers her even if it’s not the mother. So it’s part of the infrastructure of our lives to think of that relationship of dependency. So if someone raises that, that’s how I would respond. I would say, well, you’re saying that pregnancy is a disease?

(37:48):
I think most people would say no. Now, it’s not to say that there aren’t diseases or ailments that accompany that, but that pregnancy in and of itself doesn’t seem to be.

Dr. Jeff Myers (37:59):
Right. Yeah, that’s a fantastic point. I think most people that I’ve talked to about this have engaged on the merits of the argument. But I’ve been surprised. I was surprised, Stephanie and I had a conversation with a guy who said basically, here’s what it comes down to. I was raised by a single mom. I basically raised myself. She didn’t care for me, and everything would’ve been better off if I had just been aborted. And I thought, okay, I can understand why he would have no respect for the life of an unborn child. He doesn’t have respect for his own life. And of course, that changed the nature of our conversation to trying to address the value of his life.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (38:45):
But the question then is, don’t you think that people could be mistaken about their own lives? I mean, the guy that’s standing on the Golden Gate Bridge about to jump, his view of his life is that it’s worthless. And do we really want to tell people that that’s an appropriate way to think about something like that? I mean, we can be mistaken about ourselves.

I mean, we do have this view in our general culture that people’s sort of subjective judgment of their own selves ought not to be challenged. But to me, that’s actually false. I mean, people can be mistaken. I take it from a fellow human being. I’ve been mistaken about, I’ve had exaggerated views of myself and a diminished view of myself. We all go through that. That’s part of the struggle of being a human being. But we all recognize the intrinsic goodness of life.

In fact, even the gentleman you just mentioned, I mean, in a sense, he’s saying that his life would’ve been better if circumstances had been different. But doesn’t that tell you that there’s something actually worthy about it to begin with? I mean, people will oftentimes appeal to their own subjectivity, but sometimes we’re just mistaken about ourselves.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:06):
Yeah. This is really good. So I’ve got a practical question for you. We have a couple of minutes left. You’ve got students coming back to Baylor this fall. The Dobbs case was decided during the summertime. What are the discussions going to be on your campus and in your classes, do you think?

Dr. Frank Beckwith (40:29):
Interesting question. I am the faculty advisor for Bears for Life, and one of the things I’m going to actually recommend or suggest to the students in the group is that maybe we should have a public event about it.

(40:46):
In my own classes, I’m actually teaching a graduate seminar, religion, law and politics, and then an undergraduate class called Philosophy of Law. I am going to probably include something about it in philosophy of law. I haven’t put together my syllabus yet. I usually don’t. In that class, I have another class called Philosophy and the Constitution where we actually spend three weeks on abortion.

But given the unique circumstances, I think I’m going to maybe include a little bit about that. I have a section in the class about constitutional interpretation, so I’ll probably find a place there. The graduate seminar maybe I haven’t quite decided yet, although I’ve had a couple of my grad students kind of egging me on to maybe include something. But definitely in the spring when I cheat contemporary moral Problems, we will have probably two to three weeks just on abortion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:44):
Right, right. Yeah. You don’t want to force it into the syllabus just because it’s a current issue, but at the same time, it’s really, really important for people to read Judge Alito’s words and also to read the dissenting views because they’re quite strident.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (42:02):
It is. It’s an amazing dissent, and we could obviously talk about that. I’m actually thinking about working on an academic article on the dissent.

(42:18):
I was invited to contribute to a special issue on Dobbs of the Journal, The New Bioethics, and they asked me, what do you want to write on? And I’m thinking about doing it on that because I suspect there aren’t going to be a lot of people writing a lot about the dissent. And I think it’s worth dealing with because the rhetoric in it is much different than Roe v. Wade majority opinion. You see the real cultural shift in the way in which Breyer Kagan and Sotomayor go after Justice Alito and defend the right to abortion.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:52):
Yeah. Well, as you mentioned, this is one of the most consequential things to happen during our lifetime. Something I never imagined would actually take place like you. I had hoped, but I wasn’t really optimistic that it could actually take place. And here you have people who trained as attorneys to be focused on being textualists, originalists, their particular focus on the Constitution, worked their way up through their careers, get to the place where they could be appointed to the United States Supreme Court.

Every one of those steps along the way could have resulted in an opposite sort of Samuel Alito could have retired as an appellate judge and never been heard from again. But we have to be prepared, I think, and I think as men of faith, we have to think this way. Perhaps God will use me and I have to live every day in the belief that he will and then let him determine the outcomes.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (44:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think you have to be open to where the Lord is leading you, and there are going to be conversations in churches and family gatherings. And I think the one thing as pro-lifers, and it’s not fair, what I’m going to say, that we have, I think, a reputation of being harsh and overly critical, which I think is not true. Most people that I know that work in the pro-life movement are amazingly careful, caring, good people, but the media gives a certain portrayal of us.

So I think we have to be careful with our words, be kind to people when people are angry at us. That could be somebody that may have had an abortion and they’re wrestling with internal guilt. They could be a man who maybe encouraged his wife or girlfriend to have an abortion. So we have to remember that sometimes the anger against us isn’t always, in fact, I think it’s virtually never a sort of intellectual thing. I think it’s emotional. So we have to be, I think, compassionate to people.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:19):
Yeah. Yeah. Frank, this has been a really amazing discussion. Thanks for taking time to be on the show today.

Dr. Frank Beckwith (45:27):
Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:29):
Thank you to my guest today, Dr. Frank Beckwith, for joining on the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. So you can find out more about Dr. Beckwith’s work and philosophy, law, politics, abortion, and more through his website, which is francisbeckwith.com.

The prophet Jeremiah said to the people, stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls. This conversation today with Frank has demonstrated that when we go back to God’s truth and we learn to articulate it in a way that makes sense to our society, we can not only advance truth, we can also help reach the minds and hearts of our friends and neighbors. See you next week.

(46:20):
Hey, it’s Dr. Jeff from the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. I’m excited to be releasing a new book. This is the book I wrote during my cancer journey called Truth Changes Everything. It’s the book that I thought, if this is the last thing you ever get to write, this is what I want to write about. I want to write about truth.

I think at the core of all of the cultural conflicts we have today is a battle over truth. I mean a battle between the idea of capital-T truth, that truth actually exists and can be discovered. And the idea of small-T truth, that ultimate truth cannot be known. Truth is up to the individual. One side says, seek the truth. The other side says, speak your truth. Have you faced this in your own life? The question as I wrote the book is, alright, so what do you do?

(47:06):
There’s really a battle. You can really see that truth exists, but what’s the most helpful thing? So I went back into history and I just wrote the book telling stories of amazing people who were Jesus followers, who believed that Jesus is the truth, and as a result of that belief, they changed the world even in times of crisis when it seemed that the world is going to come to an end.

If that sounds like the kind of book you’d like to read, I’d love for you to pre-order a copy wherever you get your books. And if you will take a picture of your receipt and send it to me at jeff@summit.org. Then I’m going to send you a little signed book plate and then you can stick that inside your book. When it arrives, you’ll have a signed copy of the book. So the book is Truth Changes Everything, and my email is jeff@summit.org. Pre-order it please and then just send me the receipt and we’ll take it from there.

Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment. You can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share the show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review if you would, on the site where you download the show that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.