Here is the second part of my interview with Pro-Life Andrew. We talk about the biblical arguments, the race and eugenics angle, and the notion that abortion is only a “Catholic issue.”
Transcript of Pro-Life Andrew Interview, Part 2:
David: And I am back with Pro-Life Andrew. And before we were so rudely interrupted, I was saying that the science is clear that a fertilized egg is genetically a distinct person, and genetically it is what it is going to be from the moment of conception until the moment of death.
And then biblically, we have these verses, like Jeremiah 1:5, “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you. I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” So here’s God saying to Jeremiah, I decided you were going to be a prophet while you were still in your mother’s womb. And then we have Luke 1:41 “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” And then there’s Psalm 139:13 “For you formed my inward parts and wove me in my mother’s womb.”
So the Bible seems pretty clear. So just give me, so again we talked about this earlier how some Adventist theologians have developed this theory that a baby is not a real person until they’re born and breathe air for the first time. So just give me your elevator pitch—you know, you’ve got three minutes in an elevator—give me your elevator pitch as to why an unborn child is a human being that is a life that God already has a plan for, and that God already loves, and that is made in God’s image, and that we should respect and protect.
Andrew: Yes, there’s a really simple, very helpful tip is that, very often both within and outside the Adventist Church when we hear any type of presentation or sermon on the topic of abortion, the two most common verses that we hear appealed to are Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1:5. Now, it is important to notice, so that we are not talking past the other side, that people like Gerald Winslow, who was the architect of the church’s 1992 position, or as you mentioned John Stevens and Kevin Paulson, they will point at these verses in Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1 and say that that is “poetic language”—it is, Stevens called it, “picturesque speech,” it’s not really literal, it’s not really dealing with or directly identifying the nature of the unborn.
Which naturally raises the question, are there any texts in the Bible that do do so [identify the nature of the unborn], and it is very helpful for your viewers or anyone involved in this discussion to memorize the Scriptures like Genesis 25:22; that is where the two children are wrestling inside the womb. And Moses when he writes this narrative, when Moses writes Genesis under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he uses the Hebrew word “ben,” or the plural “bānim,” to define the nature of the unborn, and those are the exact same words used for born children.
For example, Ben (“son”) and Yamen (“right hand”), is the name Benjamin, “son of my right hand.” In Ruth 1:11, Isaiah 37:3, as you mentioned Luke 1:41-44, the unborn are defined as living human children, that is their concrete physical nature in this world, not some sort of poetic language. When Elizabeth says the child is jumping in my womb, that’s not poetic, she can feel the child jumping around.
I have a video I’ve been planning on making—I would argue that one of the best verses to make this case is Luke 1:36, where it says that the angel Gabriel is speaking, and he tells Mary and says, “your cousin Elizabeth has a son [υἱός] and this is his sixth month with her.” So this is the angel Gabriel, who stands in the very presence of God, and he, speaking to Mary, defines the unborn as a living human child, as a son, with the exact same word used for born male children. And you get the time period: he says, “she has had this son for six months,” and he would be born three months later. So, he gives the whole time period, the gestation, “he has been a son for the whole six months, not when he’s born, not five minutes before, not when you conceal him at the previous term of quickening, no, he’s been a son long before you even knew he was there, when he was first conceived.
So the Bible, the topic of abortion and infanticide is not a topic that needs great biblical explication anywhere in the biblical narrative, other than explicit condemnation of anyone or any group that would want to hurt a child, whether it be born or unborn. So that’s the summary, elevator view.
David: Okay, well that’s, that’s good. If you go back to the beginning of abortion, you go back to Margaret Sanger and what became Planned Parenthood, and Margaret Sanger was into eugenics, meaning selective breeding to improve the race. And a lot of it was, “we don’t want people who are imbeciles, we don’t want the retarded, we don’t want the defective—we want to weed these people out of the human gene pool.” That was eugenics. And actually it peaked around 1920 and went on into the 20s and 30s, and actually, in his post-Adventist career, John Harvey Kellogg was into eugenics—I’ve done an article on that.
Andrew: Yes! Yeah, Yeah.
David: And not a small part of this was very overt, frank racism of, you know, “we don’t want the black people breeding.” And ever since the Margaret Sanger days, there has been a racial edge to it, in that black mothers abort at something like three times the rate of white expecting mothers. And you look into the inner cities, and most of the abortions--the majority of the abortions that happen in the big cities of America are aborting black babies.
Andrew: Yes, that’s right.
David: But despite this, the black Seventh-day Adventists are the biggest proponents—or maybe because of it, I don’t know—but I mean, you know, the black Seventh-day Adventists are the biggest pro-abortion section of our church, it would seem to me. What do you make of that?
Andrew: Well, one is that, I think that is generally true, I wish that somehow we could do a very comprehensive, very accurate cross-sectional study of the Adventist mind on abortion, separated by age, demographic, level of education. And you would no doubt find some pro-abortion sentiment in all demographics, but I think that proportionately you would find much higher among black Seventh-day Adventists than you would other demographics, whether they be Asian, Hispanic or white. I think it would differ on region and of course educational background.
You’re far more likely, as I mentioned in the previous video—when Roe v. Wade was overturned, the first group to come out and talk about how sad it was, and to lament that Roe v. Wade was overturned were all these black leaders in the SDA community. And I was thankful in kind of a sad way, that during the discussion, the “theological discussion” to defend abortion, they were all black leaders, there were no whites or Hispanics or Asians involved. And I think it really helps open people’s eyes and realize this is a huge problem within this demographic.
Now, as an American citizen, aside from being an Adventist, this would be concerning by itself. But the fact that I’m an Adventist, and black Americans make up at least—depending on what survey you look at—25% to over one-third of Adventist membership in the USA, that’s a huge problem, because of the prophetic implications. If you believe that nobody has the right to life, and that at some point in the future you’re going to be given the death decree and you’re going to able to stand up against that—where are you going to get the courage to stand up for the 4th Commandment later, if you can’t tell the truth, now, about the 6th Commandment?
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews over the last several months, several years, with black Adventists, and I have a video coming up with some finding from those interviews, but one of the consistent points made repeatedly by the people I’ve talked to, is that many black Adventist, out of their own mouths, say say, “Andrew, people just don’t want to say anything, because if we speak out for the 6th Commandment now, we’re going be ostracized, or looked down upon, by the rest of black America.” So it’s a huge peer-pressure issue within that community—out of their own mouths, and I’ll go into details on that later.
Incidentally, there’s an article that was published in September 2020, so this was before the election—it was a Gallup poll on black Americans and abortion. Anyone can google this. It says, “Black Americans have become more likely to support abortion rights over the past decade. This marks a significant change from the situation 15 to 20 years ago for black Americans.” During 2001 to 2007, when interviewed, 31% of black Americans would say that abortion is morally acceptable. Fast forward 10 years, to 2017 to 2020, that number has gone from 31 to 46%. So you see a 15% percentage point gain in just 12 to 15 years. That’s huge gain of support for abortion in the black American community.
And this is a huge concern for our church, because typically where American culture goes, or where a subculture of it--where black-American culture goes, black Adventists will follow. Unless you have some strong, masculine, godly voices telling the truth, and saying, “we cannot go with the culture in that direction.” And unfortunately--this is just an observable fact--you will not find any, to my knowledge, voices within the Adventist church, in the black American community, speaking out against this—I mean there’s just no moral clarity, there’s no one speaking against it.
There was an article that came out, I think it was the Seattle Times, there was a Pastor at the Maranatha Adventist Church there in the Seattle, Washington, and he was interviewed by the--no, it was a local radio station, and he told them, “This is a sad day, this is a terrible day, that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.” Now this bizarre, its wild—I don’t know how to explain it. The very means that have been used . . .
David: I listened to that interview, that was on NPR, that was--one of the liberal websites had a link to that, and I listened to that interview, and I’m thinking, “that’s sad when you have a Seventh-day Adventist go on NPR to say overruling Roe is a sad day. That’s a sad day.”
Andrew: Well, the estimates—Kanye West made quite an issue about this, and because he has so many followers this got into the news—since Roe v. Wade, an estimated 22 million black children have been violently killed, and the idea that you would oppose slavery because slavery was bad, but turn it around and defend the most extreme, most effective way of exterminating your own race.
David: Yeah. Partial genocide. Yeah, it’s a partial genocide.
Andrew: You’re defending the genocide of your own people
David: Yeah, its crazy. They have a lot of challenges in the black community around the issue of sexuality. Something like 70% of black children are born out of wedlock, I mean its just ridiculous, and the numbers are just insane. And its going up. I mean, the numbers are higher among whites now than they were among blacks if you go back a hundred years.
Andrew: Oh, sure.
David: The illegitimacy rate among whites is about double what it was among blacks a hundred years ago. Its about 25 or 30% among whites but it’s like 70% among blacks.
This is dysfunction on such a mass scale. We’ve got to bring back male-headed households, and it’s across the board, it’s for everyone. We’ve got to bring back patriarchy, we’ve got to bring back male-headed households, we’ve got to do away with no-fault divorce, we’ve got to do away with—we’ve got to change this whole culture. But the place where its most concentrated now is in the black community. And so, you’re looking at a sub-culture of matriarchy and illegitimacy, and I guess to them, . . . maybe they’re looking at abortion as being the least of their worries.
Andrew: Well, one note to their credit, to my knowledge, black Adventists are not responsible in any way for bringing abortion into the SDA Church, as far as I know. I know that elder . . . what’s his name, I know he played a role in covering up the 1971 guidelines. But you don’t really see any black SDA leadership trying to defend abortion until about the 1990s, to my knowledge, and onward. Those ideas mostly came out of, geographically, from the Loma Linda area, the Pacific Union with John Stevens and Loma Linda. And then you see black Adventist leadership begin to repeat this decades later.
David: Well, I . . . honestly, people hate it when you mention Democrat/Republican stuff, but the reality is blacks vote tribally Democrat, its historically 90% or more, and Democrats have been radicalized on the issue of abortion. I mean, if you go back just to Bill Clinton in the 90s, Bill Clinton would say things like, abortion should be . . .
Andrew: Safe, legal, rare.
David: Yeah. Safe legal and rare. It should be safe, it should be legal, but it should be rare, and that was the Democrats’ mantra in Bill Clinton’s days, as recently as the 1990s. Today, you don’t hear them say that anymore. They don’t think it should be rare. They’re pro-abortion in all circumstances. They’ve gone from being pro-choice to abortion is practically a sacrament of their secular religion. That’s today’s Democratic Party. And I think if you’re looking for why the black community is becoming more radicalized on that its because the Democrat Party has become more radicalized. I know people hate it when you bring in Democrats and Republicans, but the reality is that the Democrat Party has gone radical pro-abortion--to the point of infanticide, where you have the governor of Virginia saying, “you’ve delivered the child, then you put the child on a towel, and then you sit down and have a conversation with the mother about whether she wants to keep it.” That was Ralph Northem, the governor of Virginia, I think. You know, in these radical Democrat-controlled states like New York, you’re going to have abortion right up until the moment of birth and beyond.
Andrew: Two points. Number one, you almost quoted verbatim from this study, and I already have it highlight. This is from a Gallup poll, it says, “Party identification is a core demographic variable of interest in today’s environment. Since over three quarters of black Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, any broad trends that differentially affect Democrats attitudes about abortion are going to affect black Americans as well. Democrat abortion attitudes have shifted significantly over the past decade.” And then they go on to explain that . . . since blacks overall in America, not just Adventism, but overall tend to identify with Democrat Party values, and since the Democratic Party values have become more extreme, black attitudes have just followed right along. Which is a problem from a cultural perspective as Americans, but an even bigger problem within the church.
A very helpful tip, and I’ve learned this from having many conversations and interviews, if you are talking with a black Adventist in our church on the topic of abortion, my recommendation is, you don’t need to, there’s no real positive value in using the word “Democratic” or “Republican,” it just causes—it just breaks down the conversation needlessly, when you can just stay on the Bible and make gains that way.
But a very big point to bring up is Edward Allred; that has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans—in fact he’s Republican, he’s supported all these Republicans, and yet he is identified with a very racially centered, racially targeted abortion genocide, I mean openly promoting it in the minority community. . .
David: And he was quoted making some very racist statements.
Andrew: And yet nobody in the black leadership will oppose that, they’ll never speak against that. And that’s a clue because that [Allred] has nothing to do with politics, and they still won’t say anything. And that’s really sad, because we need everyone on board to stand up for the sixth commandment regardless of the level of melanin in their skin. We need to provide a faithful witness.
David: One of the things I wanted to get to in this interview was . . . This has become—a lot of Adventists view this as, “oh, this is a Roman Catholic issue. The Roman Catholics care about this, we don’t.” And you look at the overruling of Roe v. Wade was because they got some really strong Catholic believers--like Amy Coney Barrett who is a very strong charismatic Catholic, and you have Kavanaugh, who is Catholic, and many of the others—so you got all these Catholics on the Supreme Court and they overruled Roe v. Wade. So this is really just a Catholic issue [they say].
But on your latest video that you produced, you brought up a really interesting point, which is that when Roe was pass—Roe was not passed, like a law, it was decided by the justices—it upset, it negated or overruled the laws in almost all the states, almost all 50 of the states had some legislation that was nullified by Roe v. Wade. But who passed these laws? It wasn’t Catholics. It was Protestants. If you go back to 1955, this was a 75% Protestant country. If you go back to 1875, this was about an 85 to 90% Protestant country. Catholics didn’t pass any of these anti-abortion laws, these were passed by Protestants. Protestants did this. And there was one guy that you talked about . . .
Andrew: Horatio Storer.
David: Horatio Storer, yeah, and the Physician’s Crusade, and this went on in, I believe, the 1870s and 80s, and this was when abortion was just become more technically available, do-able and available. Talk about that for a while.
Andrew: So there were two interesting phenomenon that took place in the 19th Century. Number one was the advances in science that allowed for the discovery that life begins at conception. The second one was scientific advances that also allowed for the development of medical technology that made surgery safer. At the time, nobody wore gloves, there was no antiseptics, there was no anesthesia, there was no analgesics, there was no anti-biotics. Surgery was incredibly dangerous, especially if you thought you could go into a woman’s uterus, for the purposes of abortion, or for any reason. Surgery was very, very dangerous. There are plenty of quotes by the law historian Joseph Dellapenna, he provides many quotes, saying that if you tried to perform an abortion in 1820 or 1830, that was tantamount to suicide. How are you going to survive that? It was so dangerous. Advances in medical technology made it easier or safer for abortionists to ply their trade, because they wouldn’t kill so many people.
And so the American Medical Association, beginning in 1857, they began what became known as the Physicians’ Crusade against abortion. And the leader of that was a doctor named Horatio Storer. And he was not just the leader in this crusade to make abortion illegal in statutory law—it had already been illegal at common law—but he was a pioneer in the whole field of gynecology and obstetrics. He wasn’t just abortion, he was interested in the whole field. But he directed this Physician’s Crusade against abortion, starting in 1857. And they were successful that by 1900, every state in the union had made abortion illegal.
And that’s critical. Because at the time, the United States were severely divided on the issue of slavery but they were all united on the topic of abortion. If you go back and look up the research by what’s his name . . . Abortion Attitudes in Statues in the 19th Century, he goes through and labels and enumerates or has a list of all the voting records. And all the legislators and all the senator, when they voted it was all 77-0, 68-0, 14-0, 100-1, 89-0. I mean there was just overwhelming, unanimous support to make abortion illegal.
Even the feminists—this is a point they never want to talk about on the pro-abortion side—the feminists of the 19th Century—Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all these people—openly supported making abortion illegal. They said it was a horrible crime, and it was used to abuse women. Which it is used today, especially by rapists and pedophiles—they love abortion.
So when the 14th Amendment was passed, I think it was the year 1868, only 8 to 9% of the population were Catholic. And because of the very strong anti-Catholic sentiment at the time, there were areas where Catholics were not even allowed to hold public office and the Catholic Church was largely silent on that issue until many decades later.
So the idea that this is a purely Catholic issue is absolute nonsense. And that’s important because when Roe was overturned just a few weeks ago, they are affirming or re-instating legislation and a mindset that was put in place by Protestants. So this was not a Catholic decision—actually it is ironic that Catholics are affirming what Protestants already had in place. And this is so important, so significant, and yet it never gets talked about.
You know, in 1867 the most well-known person to speak against abortion was a congregationalist minister named John Todd. And he published an article in a well-known journal—I think it was called the Boston Reporter—in early 1867. Well just a few months later, in June, Uriah Smith the editor of the Advent Review and Herald, he takes John Todd’s article, called “Fashionable Murder,” and publishes it in our journal. And in that article, Todd is praising the work of Horatio Storer and American Medical Association.
To appreciate that, that would be the equivalent of the Adventist Review today publishing an anti-abortion article by say, James Dobson, or Franklin Graham, or Jerry Falwell. If you did that today, people’s heads would explode. But back then, that was so normal. There was no division or disunity or problem with Adventists sharing or publishing non-Adventist ideas on abortion, because everyone agreed that it was wrong to kill children, and the unborn are children. There was no concept at all about liberty or freedom, or women have the freedom to murder their own children, or that the government cannot legislate the Sixth Commandment. That was foreign to every segment of society except the abortionists.
And to underscore that point, literally just a few hours ago, someone sent me a video of Walter Veith, just one of many who published his comments in response to Roe v. Wade, and he does the exact same thing as everyone else, he frames it as a Catholic issue, that it will create a bond with Catholicism, that everything is swinging in their favor. Its absurdity, it is total absurdity. What’s sad about our church is that--and you probably have some good thoughts on this . . .
David: Well of course it is not even all Catholic that oppose abortion, it is conservative Catholics. Liberal Catholics are people like Nancy Pelosi, who’s a Democrat, and people like Joe Biden, who’s a liberal Catholic . . .
Andrew: And Sotomayor, and everyone.
David: And by the way, abortion and Joe Biden is its own sad story, because when he was younger, he was anti-abortion, and now that he’s lost his mind, now that he has no mental capacity, he’s rabidly pro-abortion . . . So it’s not all Catholics, its conservative Catholics. You had a bishop in San Francisco who said he wasn’t going to give Nancy Pelosi communion anymore because she was so out of line on the question of abortion.
People’s memory is short. We’re down to about 45% Protestants in America now, but, again, middle of the 20th Century, 75%. Catholics didn’t pass anything. Everything that was passed was passed by Protestants, because they were 75% of the population.
You know, the whole Sexual Revolution, including abortion and everything else, what’s behind that is the collapse of Protestantism. And it’s the collapse—it is Protestantism becoming liberal, and liberalism is nothing. Liberalism is not a leavening or preservative factor or force in society, its just not. And as a result of—you know, we’re seeing the collapse of the republic now. The liberals started to take over Protestantism a hundred years ago, and then 50 years ago we had the Sexual Revolution which included abortion and no-fault divorce and all the other stuff that was connected, feminism and all the other stuff connected with the Sexual Revolution—I thought it was interesting that you made a study of that. And that’s, again—why was there a Sexual Revolution in America? Liberal Protestantism, the collapse of Protestantism. And now it’s the collapse of the republic. I think America is just . . . we’re all pretending like this is still a free country and there’s still democracy and all that, and boy, it’s gone. It’s just gone.
Well, anyway, its been a tremendous interview. I have really . . .
Andrew: Yes, thank you!
David: So, I guess my question is what are you . . . I mean, now that . . . I guess you keep going because now that Roe v. Wade is overruled, that means that abortion is a live political issue to be decided state-by-state, in every state in the union. And so it is more important than ever to get the pro-life arguments out there because, again, we’re not being ruled by the nine judges. We have the opportunity to go to our state legislatures and tell them the kind of laws that we want. People think, “oh, the fact that Roe and Casey have been thrown out, means this is not an issue anymore.”
No! Just the opposite. Now it really is an issue, because we’ve been given back our republican form of government, our elected representatives who write our laws, and we govern ourselves through our elected representatives. And now we can govern ourselves on the topic of abortion through our elected representatives.
And I think all the same needs are there, the same needs for counseling, the same needs for helping unwed mothers, the same need of extending grace to women who have had abortions, and who are feeling guilty, who need to know that God is a God of grace, that Jesus is a Savior who forgives our sins. All that is more important now than it has ever been. So I guess my question is, what do you plan to do going forward?
Andrew: Well, I have some bad news, and I saw this coming. To appreciate why this is happening, let’s go back a year or two, something you’ve written about there at Fulcrum7. During the situation of the pandemic, they created this whole level of censorship, that you’re not allowed to say certain things, because of posting “medical misinformation.” Well, as soon as Roe was overturned, I thought to myself, “You know, because big tech has so much power, and they’re so aligned with academia and Hollywood and the government, they’re going to use that same template and apply the medical misinformation to abortion as well.”
I mean, that’s the first thought that came to my mind. And literally like an hour before I had this interview with you, someone sent me this article, this was just in the news a few hours ago, published by CNBC and many other outlets: “YouTube says it will crack down on abortion misinformation, and remove videos with false claims.” So . . .
David: They’re not talking about misinformation, they’re talking about true information that they don’t like. They’re not talking about false claims, they’re talking about true claims that don’t match the liberal narrative. We’re going to have to do something with Big Tech, and its going to be ugly, but its got to happen.
Andrew: So I do foresee censorship beginning and, of course, probably intensifying. I don’t know how much longer my YouTube channel will last. I’m going to have to get on other platforms. I have slow internet and I’ve been pretty lazy about doing that, but I’m going to have to do that ASAP.
In the long term, my personal long-term goals, if I had my wish, if I had my druthers, I wish I could be, my wife and I, we’d want to be in Tibet, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or Algeria, or Bhutan, or some other un-reached area of the world doing missions. That’s my desire, that’s what I’d really like. I never thought in my wildest imagination, I’d be living in the Philippines making videos about abortions, but here we are. And I’m thankful that—praise the Lord!—all the past five years, six years of work is now becoming very relevant. We’ll see how long that information can stay up here [on YouTube]. So I will continue to follow this and publish responses and more information.
But at the same time, its kind of difficult. Where I live, I’m one of the only foreigners here, and I have lots of opportunities here to do ministry. I’m always meeting people who want to share with me or invite me to their homes, because I’m always trying to reach out to my neighborhood. I want to increase my proficiency in the language, which is Bisaya [also called Cebuano] where I live.
David: Called what?
Andrew: In the Philippines there are 7,000 Islands and the national language is called Tagalog, but in each region they have their own language, and one of the biggest languages here is called Bisaya, Bisaya.
David: Wow, never heard of it.
Andrew: Yeah, if there are Philippinos in your church, they all know it, there’s probably some Bisaya there. Because the region with the largest number of Adventists is actually in the south, in the Bisaya region. So I want to learn the language more, but at the same time, I’m spending so much time on abortion, so I hope make fewer videos and spend more time with the language. But every day I wake up and see this stuff, and its hard to stop. But I’ll continue and we’ll see where it goes.
I do believe it will probably get worse before it gets better. Because we’re seeing a lot of parallels with the Civil War, especially before the Civil War. It got worse and worse, and Adventists, at the beginning of the Civil War thought, “it won’t be long, it’ll be over soon.” But that war dragged out for several years, until finally Adventists were called to be enlisted, and now you can’t purchase your freedom anymore [hire a substitute if you were drafted]. And that drove the Adventist Church to its knees, and once it was driven to its knees and began to pray, that’s when God intervened, in March, April, 1865.
I see this issue as, morally, of a much greater magnitude, much worse than slavery, and if we’ve learned anything from the past, and because of the United States’ role in prophecy and being a nation of light, it seems pretty certain that God is going to intervene somehow, although I’m not sure how, and I don’t know if it is going to be pleasant.
David: Well, I guess we’re going to have to leave it there, Andrew, but I appreciate your time, you’ve been very generous. It’s been very enlightening and very educational. Thank you very much.
Andrew: God bless you and your audience.
David: God bless you too. Thanks very much. Pro-Life Andrew, ladies and gentlemen! Check out his channel on YouTube and the videos he’s produced. They’re all excellent, they’re all high production quality, and they’re all full of interesting information.