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

22:58We cannot have those conversations one-to-one in public. Then we can never get that message across. That's why it's vital.

23:04Francis Foster:So you're forcing the conversation about these issues into the public debate, which is a fair enough point, I suppose. It's interesting. This thing about the wrong body, I did an interview with a big Russian YouTuber, and he challenged me on this because he turned out not to agree with my view on it. and in Russian it's not the wrong body that the phraseology because of the way Russian works it has to be someone else's body and when I heard him say it in Russian I was like this makes even less sense than it does in English ironically he cut out that whole discussion from the interview but I look why do you think people are so angry about you making this statement in public like Like, I mean, people might disagree, but why does it make them violently angry, do you think?

23:53I think when it comes to something as harmful, as potentially damaging, if I'm right, if the science is right, if my message is true, then it means that a lot of people have participated in something that has actually been extremely harmful for either their kids or they've supported it for other people's children, and that's really hard to reconcile with. And I can totally understand that that's a very sensitive issue, but we can't therefore, because it has been done, just perpetuate this on forever because we don't want to reckon with what has gone wrong. And I understand that a lot of people have acted under false information or false understandings of what the right thing to do is.

24:29But if we're not open to being challenged about having potentially done the wrong thing, we'll never be able to stop that for someone else's child happening. So there was somebody who came who was aggressive to us, who said her kind of refrain was, I have a trans daughter. And so obviously she's committed to that worldview. And if she got it wrong, if I'm right, then she has caused harm to her child. So it's difficult. It's sensitive. It can make people angry, I think, because of that. But that's not a reason not to have the conversation. That's not a reason to suppress the truth. I agree. I think also the thing is as well, I think people have realised looking back on social justice movements, you know gay rights etc etc you know we got a lot of stuff wrong we got a lot of stuff wrong and so I think people over corrected on this particular issue and they see it as a moral crusade without actually looking at the facts of what is actually going on yeah yeah we're we're often blind to our own we kind of a lot of people and you know we're all guilty of this we'll come up with our ideology first and find the facts to sit in the narrative but I think with and we've been um so privileged in the UK to see the evidence that's come out of the Tavistock Clinic, the link between children who think they're transgender and who have autism.

25:49I think it was, according to Hannah Borens' book, 97.5 % of kids at the Tavistock Clinic had some other situation going on, like bullying, anxiety, depression, etc. And over a third of them had autism, whereas only less than 2 % of kids in the country have autism. Not anymore, Lose.

26:10Francis Foster:Everyone's got autism now. Poor ADHD. Kids. It's like a piece for adults, that's right. But, yeah, so we've seen this evidence in bulk. We've seen how that's had a result at the Supreme Court. We don't really have an excuse not to know the facts and the science anymore. And I can't remember exactly what your question was. Sorry, that's my bad. I sat-tracted with my silly joke. It's essentially, when we look at previous social justice movements, civil rights, we look back and go, we kind of made a few mistakes on this one. So this is another compensation, I think, is what Francis is saying. Yeah.

26:45So, yeah, so we're scared to challenge dominant thinking. We're scared to challenge the kind of wave of if you can identify as this and that and the other, why can't you identify as a boy? Why can't you identify as a girl? But, yeah, it's easy to get on the left side. Sorry to interrupt.

27:02Francis Foster:I think what Francis is saying is something else, which is a lot of people are aware that they might feel that they ended up on, you might be a little young to feel like this, but a lot of people might feel that there were periods in the past when the majority of society, the dominant worldview, was insufficiently compassionate and understanding and willing to incorporate perspectives of people who were not like them. And there's a fear of making those mistakes again. which is, I think, where maybe some of the motivation is also coming from. Yeah, exactly. And I think there is, amongst the kind of boomer generation, more of a propensity to that view to not speak out.

27:46You see a lot of support, I guess, amongst that generation for being on the right side of history and not questioning whether this really is the right side of history if we really have gone too far. There's got to be a point which kind of liberalism kind of hits the buffers and we see the harms. And it's OK to course correct and to say that, you know, if. Yeah, to course correct and come back and say we've gone too far. We're harming kids. We're harming people. Let's see if we can bend back a little bit into something that's safer. I'm actually genuinely proud of because I think Britain has actually led the world in this conversation, in this discussion.

28:26And look, there's, of course, there's toxic elements to it. But the fact that you had brave people on the left like J.K. Rowling, female Labour MPs or former Labour MPs like Rosie Duffield showed that it wasn't a bipartisan issue. This was about children's safety. It was about female rights. The problem, I think, comes when people classify it as a left or right issue. Yeah. And that's very much the case in America. Is that the case across Europe? I think more so, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, we've been so lucky to have these immense spokespersons on both sides. But I think a lot of the people that were in Brussels that day accused us of being American, and actually neither of us are, although we both sound American.

29:08I am Scottish and Chris is Canadian. But the initial reaction was like, oh, you're American fascist. And they obviously have only ever seen this debate through the prism of the kind of extremes, or yeah, the more American polarized version of it, which when reported on in Europe is reported on as good and evil with the Democrats being the side of the good in a lot of European media. And so that kind of narrative shape has infected a lot of the thinking and reduced willingness to look at the actual science and evidence and to come up with people's own opinions. And do you know what the EU's approach to this is?

29:44Because that would be genuinely fascinating. Yeah, so I think the EU itself doesn't have competence on this area. It's a nationwide, it's a national issue. which ultimately is, again, allowing countries to make their own mind up on it. I mean, the EU can obviously show some ideological favoritism when it comes to, I believe, there was just a few weeks before we went to Brussels. In fact, I'd actually, Chris had tweeted about this scene coming out for me, I think it's Ursula von der Leyen's Twitter with trans pride flags, and that had actually sparked us into thinking, oh, it might be worth going to Europe to have some of these conversations on the street and to meet with some European politicians and to challenge some of this thinking.

30:28So clearly there is a kind of ideological bias within the institution, but thankfully that doesn't set policy at the moment within nations. And I also think as well, I mean, Europe is coming to its own reckoning with a lot of progressive policies, for instance, mass immigration, which has proven, unfortunately, to create a lot of social problems. I think more and more people are starting to wake up and realize just because something sounds good doesn't mean it actually is good or has positive real world implications. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there is a stream towards that. It's tough because we have to bend back a lot of the kind of journey to extreme liberalism that brought us here.

31:08I think there was, this might be a bit controversial, but in the kind of 60s in the sexual revolution, we had this kind of birth of feminism or the spurt of feminism, let's say, which said women are just as good as men, if not better. So a woman can do anything a man can do. A woman can be a CEO and a boss and behave like a man and have a strong commitment like a man would do in a stereotypical situation and be this kind of Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City, male-dominant lifestyle. And that kind of thinking of women and men are just interchangeable, we can act like a man, has kind of led us on this path to now say, I mean, if a woman can have everything a man can have, a woman can be a man, why can't a man just literally be a woman?

31:56Why can't a woman just literally be a man? And it's tough to reckon with. And I know a lot of the people who have championed this cause are feminists, so I know it's a tricky thing to reckon with. But I think we have disintegrated so much what it means positively to be a woman, what it means positively to be a man, and celebrate the differences between them, the kind of complementary differences, that we struggle to unpick socially why it is that this ideology doesn't work.

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34:13Francis Foster:It's kind of on brand for me, but I'm only asking because it doesn't make much sense. I don't understand the logic of we told women they could be everything, a man is, to then some people thinking, well, you can actually become a man. That doesn't make sense to me because one is about, well, look at you, like you have a career, you're out there working just as much as your husband is, right? You're doing all these things. But I don't understand the leap from that to, well, suddenly I want to cut my breasts off. That's a little bit far for me. No, I mean, and there is incredible, like, I'm very grateful for the opportunities I have, absolutely.

34:49But I think there's an ideology which has said and has disintegrated the things that women used to celebrate being a woman for. So you very seldom hear motherhood being celebrated today, or even though motherhood is an intrinsic part of being a woman, as something only a woman can do. That doesn't mean that every woman has to be a mother, but it is a wonderful part of being a mom and to be involved in family life. These things are kind of seen as second-class women now, whereas the first-class women are seen as the ones who are out there being CEOs and boss babes. And again, there's nothing morally wrong with either of these things, but I think we've just disintegrated the celebration of the uniqueness of being a woman.

35:26And then also the uniqueness of being a man. And there's things that men can do that women can't do. There's strengths that men have physically, but also in different areas of life that women don't have. There are biological differences. There are psychological differences. You see that in parenting, right? A woman will be much more the nurturing parent to the small newborn, and the dad is the one that's more likely to be throwing them up, teaching them different skills. So men and women are different, and that's a good thing, and there's lots to be celebrated from that. By erasing that, by saying they're just the same,

35:56Francis Foster:they're just, anyone can do anything. then it's everything is interchangeable that makes more sense and I think that has led us on a path over many decades now to have this ideology of like well if we now have the technology that if someone really wants to be a man instead of saying this woman is a great has great leadership skills she said well she has a great leadership skills so she should be a man and therefore make the technological leap to be a man and so yeah we've kind of ended up with this confusion of gender this wreck of what it means to have a human difference in biological sex that I think we've lost a lot.

36:35Francis Foster:Look, I completely agree. Back to the kitchen you go. But to me, the women's rights aspect of this conversation is obviously important. You know, talking about feminism, very interesting. But to me, the most important thing about this conversation is the kids. Yeah. And what is happening to the kids because... As somebody who worked with children for 12 years, this idea that a child can identify as another gender and suddenly they're able to consent to all these medical interventions, to surgeries, to me was quite frankly demented. Yeah, it absolutely is. And in the UK, although we've gotten rid of puberty blockers for now, we still have this upcoming drug study, drug trial, which will allow, it's capless and allows basically, it's a gateway to allow any children who want to experiment with puberty blockers to join this drug trial and have access to them and still have this bodily harm done to them.

37:40Even the puberty blockers, they can cause bone density damage, heart problems, as well as the psychological effects and the long-term pathway to harmful surgeries. Just to start, what about the sterilisation aspect of it? Is that also a thing? Yeah, if it goes on long enough, and obviously, of course, one thing leads to another, which will take it. But sterilisation can occur after prolonged use of puberty blockers. So what you're effectively saying is, I thought that we put this conversation to bed and actually kids and puberty blockers, that is never going to happen again because of the Cass report.

38:15Unfortunately not. I mean, it was great to see the Labour government come in and put in that puberty ban. And Hamza Yusuf from Scotland, also quite a left-wing politician, he banded up in Scotland under his leadership as well. So that was exciting to see. But with this drug trial coming in in the UK, that will allow this to continue. And so I have a concern that we're not quite at the victory moment that we think we're at yet. We still have a lot of work to do. we still have to I would like to see this drug trial cancelled but I'd like to see this conversation continue so that nobody forgets about this damage that can happen you know this sterilisation of kids the harm to their bodies, the harm to their psychology and just that fundamental lie that they're not who they're meant to be But I don't understand why there was, a report came in it advised that puberty blockers should be banned, this is by one of the most prestigious paediatricians in the country I thought we'd won.

39:15What do you mean that there's a drug trial now? How's this been allowed to happen? A lot of people don't know about it. And so maybe it hasn't had the scrutiny that it deserves. It hasn't come into force yet. But I'm very, very concerned about it. And it's not even just the cast report. We then only a few months ago had an American version of the same saying the same thing as the cast report. And we've had the same evidence come out of Sweden, Finland, across many of the northern European countries. They've produced these reports as well that show that it can be harmful to have these drugs. And yet somewhere underneath, there's still a push.

39:48There's still a movement to try and liberalize this law for kids. And so we have to stand really firm. We have to keep having this conversation. We have to keep talking about the harms that this can endure and talk about how perfect and beautiful kids are in their own bodies in order to prevent this coming and prevent us turning back the clock. The victory isn't sealed. We have to keep going. And you say that there's been this push. I mean, is it organizations like Mermaids? I mean, where is this coming from? Surely every right-thinking person now looks at this and goes, this is an abomination.

40:22I think there is still, I mean, a lot of the PR kind of battle has been won on this issue, but I think there's still a lot of people within places of power who hold a different view. They are maybe just biding their time. Winning the PR battle is so strong, but it isn't everything. I mean, that is, look, the work that has been done on this by lots of different people, gender critical feminists and pediatricians and everybody, it's been incredible. But it's slightly disheartening to hear that it's continuing and that there are these people in positions of power who are still pushing this narrative.

41:00Yeah, I know. It's very disheartening because it seems so obviously true, right? It seems like the most important message of regeneration and the most critical message children shouldn't be having these harmful drugs.

41:12Francis Foster:And the point of this trial is to establish whether it's harmful or not? Yeah, the Kessler report actually unfortunately left the door open for this. It said that there can be studies carried out to test further if the puberty blockers cause harm. Now the US study from the Department of Health and Human Services said that there shouldn't be a trial. They said that this stuff was so dangerous and so immoral that it wouldn't be right to test it on Kessler. It's like human experiments really, isn't it? Yeah, it's human guinea pigs. And so the US report has said don't do it, but the CAST report said it is okay to do it.

41:43And so we've been left in this difficult situation in the UK. So we need someone firmer and stronger to come in and say no, to look at this evidence and say we don't even want to test this. It isn't right to test it on a child. No child can fully consent to that. They can't consent to being infertile at 30 years old. You know, when I was in Australia talking to Melbourne students who were very woke, they, you know, at 18, were like, I don't care. I don't want to have kids anyway. But when people get to, you know, 30, 35, they're saying, give me kids or give me a divorce. You know, it's a total change in lifetime.

42:17It's 18 to 35. You're almost a different person in terms of your views and your desires. And especially if you're taking these drugs at a younger age than 18, if you're taking them at 13 or 12, how are you ever going to know what you want? It's unfair to put that responsibility on a child, and that's why all these drug studies must end. And especially, you know, we have to not only continue this in the UK, but around the world we want to see purity blockers banned in every single country. And how many kids are involved in this trial? So it's capless. So, I mean, it's not begun yet, but once started, there's currently no cap on how many children can take part.

42:53So potentially hundreds of kids can take it and...

42:57Francis Foster:But there is still time for it to be prevented from going ahead. Well, I hope people are listening to that and learning about that. Lois, the other part of your work that we wanted to talk about, and look, we've had for full disclosure on the subject of abortion, we had Anne Furedi, who is very supportive of that being available to women in this country. And we've had your husband, Callum Miller, on the show to talk about the pro-life position or anti-abortion position, whatever you might want to call it. And I can't say that either Francis or I came away from those two discussions with like a position firmly in one camp or the other.

43:36I won't tell Callum.

43:38Francis Foster:Well, he's probably watching. But at the same time, you know, my view has always been that kind of where we were in Britain was a very unpleasant and messy, unfortunate compromise that was probably broadly reflective of the wishes of the people of this country. And while, you know, people who are very pro-life like you would not like it, there were also very kind of firm pro-abortion campaigners that might not like it. It was kind of a settled issue in this country. You might not think that's a good thing, but you get what I'm saying, right? And now, what we've got now, the Labour government is just basically decriminalized abortion up until birth.

44:20Francis Foster:Yeah. And I'm someone who really doesn't want to be talking about this issue. you know, it's not an issue I'm particularly keen to get involved in. I'm going, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, I know. What's going on? I think a lot of people feel like that. It's crazy. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. Up to birth. What are you talking about? So what happened? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of people have reacted like you reacted because we had, as you say, an abortion lot 24 weeks. Most people in the country didn't actually know when it was. and they knew it was somewhere in the middle. 24 weeks is actually quite high for the average person.

44:56According to polling, when finding out it's 24 weeks, which is double the EU average, most EU countries are at 12 to 15 weeks, 70 % of women actually wanted to see that lowered because at 24 weeks, it's a viable child. There's a lot of characteristics which people would want to protect. And so actually the majority of people wanted it lowered and only 1 % of women actually wanted to see abortion up to birth. And yet now we have this situation which was catalyzed during COVID because they introduced pills by post-abortion. So this was a scheme where within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, you could call up an abortion provider, say, in less than 10 weeks, and you would receive pills to do your own abortion in your own bathroom, which actually seems to me like one of the reasons that we brought in abortion on the first place was to avoid women doing it to themselves, by themselves.

45:45It doesn't seem safe or dangerous to me. In fact, there was a lot of investigations to show that it increased the likelihood of people needing an ambulance, needing medical care after. But

45:53Francis Foster:this is the situation that was brought in. Unfortunately, it's both easy to mistake how far you want in a pregnancy. It's also quite easy to lie about how far you are on in a pregnancy. And so there were some cases of women who would call up at 33, 35 weeks, really near the end of pregnancy, say that they're less than 10 weeks after a short conversation, receive these pills and carry out an abortion on a viable, healthy baby in a very horrific circumstance. Of course, you need to birth that child after you've taken those pills. There was a very famous case called Carla Foster who birthed her dead baby.

46:32She later called her Lily. She talked about the traumatic experience it was. And she did face prosecution for what she had done to this child because an abortion at 33 to 35 weeks was illegal. Instead, my response to the tragedy of what happened to Carla and her baby and for the few others that it affected in terms of other women engaging in this illegal action was, my goodness, we need to end pills by post-abortion. So to protect women, the law is there not to criminalize but also to protect. To protect women from being in this situation, no one should be delivering their dead child alone in their bathroom.

47:07This is horrific. And no child should have to face, at that stage, very pain-capable, very sentient, would have faced a horrific death as a baby at 35 weeks as well. So that's what I thought, you know, protect the law, strengthen the law. Other people thought, well, let's get rid of the law so that women who do this at this stage don't face prosecution. And so what we will likely see now is instead of this affecting a small percentage of women who take this action towards the end of their pregnancy, it's now not criminalized. There's no law to deter women from engaging in this. So it could be that we see an increase now in these babies being lost at this very late stage in pregnancy.

47:51Francis Foster:It's also horrible for the women. I know people who've had the miscarriage fairly early on in the pregnancy for whom that and the process, I won't go into details, but very, very physically challenging, sometimes life threatening, actually. It can be, yeah. Even if you think abortion should be available to whatever point, I don't think you'd want to encourage people to do it themselves without medical support in this way where there's also, as you say, no verification of the age of the baby. I just, I don't, this isn't right. Yeah, I know. This really isn't right. I know, I know. And so now we're in this ridiculous scenario where you can do it to yourself at the latest and most dangerous stage of pregnancy, but a doctor can't help you.

48:36And so obviously the next step for that movement is going to say, well, we must legalize it for doctors as well. And therefore we just have no abortion law left in this country. It will be up to 40 weeks for any reason, which actually is very much out of step with the majority of polling. Very few people think it should be for any reason at all. Very, very few people think it should be up to birth. You know, if you think about, if you've seen a newborn baby, it doesn't look very different the day before. It's just in a geographically different place than its mother's womb. But to say, you know, on that day, a baby in that morning waking up could be killed or could be born on one day.

49:10I think it's actually good for us as a nation to be face to face with the level of evil this is, the level of depravity this is, that we have allowed ourselves to kill babies at this stage. I think we needed that wake up call. And maybe now we can kind of reconsider, is this really what we want?

49:28Francis Foster:I can't imagine. Look, I think it's very important to distinguish between legalizing abortion, which is not what's happened. No. Right? But you explained it very well. But nonetheless, I can't imagine the majority of people in Britain or even a significant minority of people in Britain want women to be getting a pill through the post that they take. And even if the baby is almost ready to be born, do you want to prosecute women for it? You probably should just not allow people to have an abortion by post. That's probably what you actually should deal with. But I just, I don't understand how this has happened.

50:11Francis Foster:I think it's really terrible. I think it's really terrible as well. I mean, at that stage in pregnancy, you have to give birth to the child anyway. People kind of think that abortion is like a magic pill that just disappears the child. You have to deliver that child dead or alive. So why not? If you're in a situation where you cannot take care of that child, can you not allow them to live and find adoption as an option? Can we allow them a chance at life? Do we have to kill the child at that stage? It's perfectly healthy, perfectly viable. It's so difficult to come face to face with. And yet here we are as a nation.

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51:21which, let's face it, we could have used for trigonometry back in 2018. Plus, did I mention that iconic purple ShopPay button used by millions of businesses around the world? It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Your customers already love it. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash trigger. Go to shopify.co.uk slash trigger. One more time. That's shopify.co.uk slash trigger. You know, for a society that is obsessed with mental health and constantly bangs on about mental health to the point where everybody is now sick of it, you go, do you not worry about the mental health of a mother who is maybe weeks or even days away from having a baby and then orders those pills.

52:23Right. If that's not a cry for help, I don't actually know what is. Yeah. In fact, a pro-choice scholar, David Ferguson from Australia, he's one of the leading pro-choice scholars, but he's passed away now, but he did research on mental health and abortion and showed that actually abortion can increase someone's risk to suicidality by 70 % and drug abuse by almost 300%. It's an incredibly traumatic event to go through. I think in our kind of propaganda and our rhetoric today we minimize this as just oh it's just someone's choice it's just a pill that they take you know it's just like getting a tooth pulled is what I've been told multiple times it's not it's a it's a incredibly traumatic life event which ends the life of one of the people involved and I think because we don't take it seriously we've allowed ourselves to get to the situation because if it's not a life if it's not a life then it doesn't matter if it's 24 weeks or 40 weeks.

53:20But if it is, then this is the most serious and grave situation that we find ourselves in. And I think we have to reckon with that as a nation and think, do we want this? Do we want abortion after birth? Do we think that babies do not count because they are smaller or weaker or more dependent on their mother? Is that the kind of human rights framework that we subscribe to? Or do we want to have to give people a bit more value just based on the fact that they're human, just based on the fact that they are, you know, a member of our species, a member of our race, can we protect them and find better for those babies and for their mothers instead?

53:54But, and I take the point about the baby, but I think my point was something else, which is, if, look, having a child, and I've seen friends go through it, and it's profoundly stressful, particularly for the mother, you know, postpartum depression, hormones all over the place, there should be a mental health intervention if a woman is saying with a matter of weeks to go that she wants to abort her baby there is something very serious happening mentally yeah that woman needs support not here's some pills and go into a bathroom and kill your kid exactly exactly and i think because abortion has become so trivialized i think you know even this is the most extreme case of it but i think all along the journey with abortion is often seen is just a, oh, you're in trouble or you're distressed, you're worried about this pregnancy, let's take an abortion pill.

54:43It's seen as just a really quick reliever, a really quick solution. And that can be a cry for help early in pregnancy as well, but especially late on, you're absolutely right. If they have carried this child for 35 weeks and they want to just take a pill to end their life, it does make no sense. And we should have much more serious mental health safeguarding within this kind of area or this kind of industry, this abortion industry. But I think because, like, ideologically, it has been reduced so much to just a woman's rights issue. It has been reduced to, you know, it's my body, my choice. It's just a pill.

55:21It's just like getting a tooth pulled. Because it has become, you know, such a, been diminished so much, they don't have those mental health safeguards in place. They don't have those physical health safeguards in place or those legal safeguards to protect women from going through this experience. And it also says something. I mean, horrifically antenatal about our culture. The fact that this is deemed acceptable is, it's quite frankly, disgusting. Yeah, an anti-mother, right? Yeah. So I guess putting out the message that this is better than becoming a mother. And I think, you know, we really lack a lot of support for mums and for babies in those early stages.

55:56There's a lot more that we can be doing in our society, in our community to help mothers, you know, be in community with each other, be meeting other mums, be not stressed about having to go back to work straight away, but instead of be supported to take the time off that they need. There's so much more we can be doing to help and support mothers and babies, but instead what we often just offer is, you know, is your body your choice or is your problem your choice? You want to have this baby, you're on your own, or you just take an abortion pill. We don't have that support that would be so much better.

56:25Francis Foster:And do you think this is a case of just people trying to solve a legal problem so they make a law that's probably not very smart, or is there kind of an extreme ideological bent to all of this? I think there's an ideological bent. I think it's clear that on the kind of pro-abortion lobby side, there can't be anything wrong with abortion because then if one thing is wrong with abortion, then everything is wrong. It's one of those black and white issues. But that's a very extreme framing of it, Lois, surely, because I think, and the polling to which you refer probably shows all of this. Probably, you tell me if I'm wrong, But I imagine most people in this country support abortion being available at some point.

57:04Francis Foster:Right? Is that fair? Yeah, sure. And most people recognize that it is a women's rights issue to some extent. Sure. Because it affects women in a very profound way, right? But on the other hand, the woman is not the only person involved. And so what you're trying to do is find some sort of compromise, right? Which is where I think most of the country is at. Is that fair? Yeah, definitely. Right? But this is extreme. Yeah. This is really extreme. Yeah. And so I'm just trying to understand, is it because they were like, well, look, actually, I, well, you know, even when I think about it, do I want this woman who's probably in a really terrible state of mind, who's made a bad decision, a terrible decision for her that's going to affect her for the rest of her life?

57:46Francis Foster:Do I want her to then also go to prison for it? When you frame it like that, I don't know. What I'd rather is she didn't have if you're going to have an abortion. You have medical support. Or you have counseling around that. You have all the things there to make sure that physically, medically, in other ways, you're supported. That's what I'd prefer. So do you think they just haven't considered this aspect of it? Or is the Labour government really kind of like, oh, let's just allow women to kill babies? Well, no, we agree more than you think. Because I also think this isn't the average person's wish.

58:22I don't think the average person was working on this. But I think that there is a pro-abortion lobby that would take a more extreme view.

58:29Francis Foster:And you think they've influenced this decision? Yeah, I think to me it seems like a clear pathway to go from pills by post to legalising abortion, sorry, decriminalising abortion for women at the end of pregnancy and then decriminalising it for doctors. There's a clear kind of pathway. We can't let women do this by themselves. We've got to have medical help there. Exactly. You can see the kind of slope. This is crazy. This is insane, though. Yeah. This isn't right. This is not acceptable. Yeah. This is crazy. No, I know I keep repeating myself. I literally haven't. This is completely unacceptable.

59:03I know.

59:06Francis Foster:So do you do you sense that there's a potential for any kind of amendments to this going forward? Is this being looked at or is this now, you know, they've decided and this is where we are? Well, I've been encouraged, as you said at the start, a lot of people who have never really engaged in this issue suddenly have kind of formed an opinion in the last few weeks and seen the extremity of where we're at. And I'm speaking that and I include politicians in that from different parties. And I think, you know, it's I don't think the matter is settled. I think it's going to be something that's discussed in upcoming elections.

59:39I think parties will be thinking right now how they want to respond to this in their manifesto, for example, because because it had I think they won the political battle. But I don't think they won the PR battle. I don't think they won the nation over to this idea that it should be all the way up to birth.

59:55Francis Foster:I tell you, you know, someone who understands public communication a little bit. If you get normal people to recognize what's happened here and to fully understand it, whoever passes is going to have no support whatsoever. This is not going to be popular with the public when they get what's happened. But the ordinary British person isn't going to be on board with this. They just aren't. It's already not popular. Again, polling shows only 1 % of women actually support abortion up to birth, which is obvious when you think about it. Very few support abortion up to birth. So I think they did push their luck on going this far.

1:00:2724 weeks was already extreme. 24 weeks was already one of the most liberal in the world. To go up to 40 was too far. And I think this opens the conversation again for where do we want to put this? Where do we want to start protecting life? But it's also recklessly irresponsible because you're just going to dish out these pills to women who are, let's say, eight months pregnant. You don't know what the psychological state of this woman is. Maybe she can't consent. Maybe she's so depressed, which happens to a lot of women. Maybe she's in a position where she simply can't consent for whatever reason to be taking these pills.

1:01:03She takes the pill. Yeah. I mean, that's a potential lawsuit. Surely. Yeah. Well, I mean, what about, you know, this is the case at the start, you know, even if they aren't at the end of their pregnancy, if they're calling up for pills at any stage, how do you know that that's not an 18-year-old sitting with her 45-year-old boyfriend across the table who's also listening to the phone? And the abortion fighter says, is this all because, is this all your own idea? And she says, yes, yes.

1:01:28Francis Foster:Well, while he's going. While he's going, yes, yes. Exactly. So when we brought in this way to get an abortion pill with such little safeguarding, with such little care or prevention of, you know, abuses. It used to be that if you would go in to get your abortion pill, you'd have a bit of counselling and they'd be able to ask you on your own, is anyone influencing you to do this? Can you lie there? Yes. That's not fail-safe, absolutely not. But at least there's a little bit more than, you know, a quick phone call with someone you've never met just, you know, when you're just trying to get a hold of these pills.

1:02:00So when we reduced abortion pills just to, you know, getting, it's almost like getting a paracetamol through the post.

1:02:06Francis Foster:Look, during COVID, all kinds of crazy shit happened. A lot of it was completely unacceptable. But you kind of go, it was COVID. There's lots of arguments about a woman stuck with her abusive boyfriend. You can kind of imagine it. COVID's over. And now we should be repealing the things that were extremely... But instead, politicians doubled down and they made this permanent. Doesn't make any sense. Sorry, Frank. Do you think this is a cost-cutting exercise? So if you think about every time, let's say a woman's eight months pregnant, she wants to kill her baby. Let's just be honest, that's what it is.

1:02:40And they go to a doctor. It's actually far cheaper for them not to have to go to a GP, and a GP will talk to this person and go, actually, this woman is in.

1:02:49Francis Foster:Well, she can't go to a doctor if the baby is eight months, right, at this point? Yeah, so she wouldn't be able to get a doctor after 24 weeks. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Well, there's some situations, but they're rare. Okay, so, but you just go, nothing about this makes sense. And look, I know this is going, people are going to get upset about this, but I just imagine if you're the father of that child. Yeah. And then you find out that your eight month old baby has effectively been killed. I don't know what I would do. That would feel, well, that's the death of my child. Yeah. Yeah. I think abortion culture has really impacted men and fatherhood as well, just something that doesn't come up as often.

1:03:35And I understand why. Sorry, Luz, I now keep interrupting.

1:03:37Francis Foster:What's abortion culture? The idea that it should be prominent and normal, like that Lily Allen laughing about having her five abortions is just a regular occurrence, that it's your body, your choice, and no one can question it. The cultural presumption that abortion is okay and even good kind of backfired on both men and women because it used to be that, and this is obviously an ideal scenario, and it didn't always work out like this, but it used to be that if you got a girl pregnant, you would probably marry her, you would take responsibility, you'd become parents, mother and father. With the advent of My Body, My Choice, it really became your body, your choice, your issue, your problem, you're on your own.

1:04:19if you want to keep this baby, it's on you. And so that allowed the disintegration of that fatherhood responsibility.

1:04:26Francis Foster:It allows men to abandon their responsibility, which is what you're really saying. It allows men to abandon, and it also now kind of enforces that abandonment because men have no say whether their child is aborted. It's a sense to them, and I can understand people feel like it's a woman's body. I understand that they have carried the hardship of the pregnancy. but in disintegrating this idea that it was meant to be together it was meant to be a joint responsibility it's actually atomized and isolated both parts which makes it much harder on both and i i just feel that this is a part of the conversation that's not being talked about because particularly for men if eight months old and the baby is killed that's and then there's what are you left with you there's no recourse to any type of justice or anything you're just left with the knowledge that your baby has been killed.

1:05:18And what do you do? You just get up and go to work the next day and carry on as if nothing has happened? Right. That's a profound grief that's going to be impacted upon you. Yeah. And there's a kind of psychological dissonance as well. I know at least in Scotland, maybe in England as well, you can now get a kind of death certificate if you have a miscarriage in your pregnancy, even before 24 weeks.

1:05:38Francis Foster:To acknowledge the pain. To acknowledge the pain. To acknowledge the loss of that life. To acknowledge that there was a child that was there and now there isn't. so you know you can have this our society our government grants this recognition to some children but others because of a decision that was made they're just a clump of cells our human dignity or human worth can't just depend on whether we are wanted it's got to depend on something more than that you know it's interesting I've never thought about this but you kind of when you mentioned men taking responsibility I never thought about this but people might not know this about me so I was born when my mom was 18.

1:06:13Francis Foster:She just turned 18 four days before. And my dad was 20. They met at university, probably had a one-night stand or whatever. And they could have had a different option in my case. But my dad did take responsibility. My parents' marriage, not necessarily the best one, but nonetheless, four children, all happy and unhappy in their own different ways. But like like I might not have been here. Yeah. The world doesn't get constant kissing. Yeah, well, a lot of people would be happy about that. So you've all missed out. No, but like I think that's a very profound point, actually. And I've always felt, it's not that I was ever likely to be in that position, but I'd always nonetheless felt that if I was in a position where a child was coming into the world because of me, ultimately it was my responsibility, right?

1:07:08Right.

1:07:09Francis Foster:I think it's a very unhealthy society that doesn't teach men that it doesn't expect that of them, but also does not create the conditions for that to also then be reciprocated with, as you say, them having some input into that decision being made as well. Now, I would hope nonetheless, and maybe you can tell us, Lois, that in most situations, nonetheless, it is the two potential parents who are having that discussion. Is that depends? I mean, there's no way to measure. There's no way to gather data on that kind of thing. so you know whether it's together or a lot of girls will I mean because it's so diminished and to me a lot of girls will just do it by themselves or at the encouragement of friends I've got a good friend who had an abortion at 19 effectively because her friends told her to and told her it would be no big deal and that was you know one of the most profound regrets of her life and so yeah and when you were talking I was thinking as well that it's just kind of baked into to decide from a young age because instead of having that expectation of fatherhood and responsibility at schools now we have a lot of sex ed we don't have any family ed we don't have we have we get told consistently how to avoid pregnancy but nothing about well it's because because then you're moralizing you're telling people the the stable family with the mom and the dad is like you know you're excluding people and all this other stuff which of course yes i'm somewhat sensitive to making sure everyone's included but also there is a typical yeah way of doing this thing that works.

1:08:35Francis Foster:And that also ought to be communicated somehow, it seems to me. And I was very fortunate, I guess, because I was brought up in the culture, but also in a family where these things were kind of, you know, made manifest to me. But I can totally see how absent that in a society where technologically everything is now so easy and just, oh, you know, you order a deliveroo and an abortion pill in the same transaction. It's not good. It's not good, Lois. It's not. It's not good at all. I think you're right in terms of the we're scared to speak about a mom and a dad being best for a child. But again, it's kind of prioritizing adult wants and desires and needs above what's good and healthy and right and statistically proven.

1:09:25Having a a father in the picture in the home is going to prevent that child by many hundreds of percentage points from committing crime, from failing out at school. They're going to have a much better chance of going into university, having a stable appointment, good health. The statistics are just so clear and obvious. The data is there about good fathers and good mothers. And I appreciate that there'll be situations, of course, that a woman will have no choice but to go along and we should give her all the support that she needs. And there'll be situations where dads are cut out of the picture without their, and that's really tough as well.

1:09:57But I think we should at least talk about how we can promote and help families to have that ideal scenario and to support their child in the best way.

1:10:05Francis Foster:Yeah. And by the way, just to, sorry, Francis, just on, I want, I know people who are same-sex couples who are bringing up children brilliantly. And so this is why it's difficult because I certainly don't want to say, you know, these types of couples can't raise a child properly. And that is what a lot of people hear. But at the same time, there's got to be room to say that the typical way of this, the way that this is done is like a mom and a dad. And that's something that we might want to tell children at some point. We might also tell them that, you know, in some occasions, some people are different, they might do this.

1:10:39Francis Foster:But broadly speaking, we should also be communicating that. That seems to me like the right balance. The problem with this inclusion agenda is that it's become exclusion. If it was about inclusion, which is like, look, this is kind of how we normally do it, but this thing also happens and we are aware of that and accepting of that and tolerant of that, that's fine by me at least. But we've gone too far now, it seems to me, to the point where we're just excluding the norm and celebrating only the non-typical way of being. Yeah. I mean, Katie Faust is one of the best writers out there on this. She was raised by two lesbian mums.

1:11:18I didn't know that about Katie. And she now does a lot of work challenging the, or she takes a child first approach, which I think is really helpful. And so is it, you know, are there intrinsic desires in adults to have children? And is that a lovely thing? Yes, absolutely. And I don't want to diminish that at all. But is it right to deprive a child of a father, a deprive a child of a mother? That's really hard on the child. And we can't be blind to what that does for a newborn baby to be taken away from a mother, for example, in a surrogacy situation. And be deprived of that mother to fulfill the well-meaning desires of another couple.

1:11:56I think that's something that we have to challenge a little bit or unbiases on. But you're right also that if you look at a children's library these days, you'd think that that was the average situation and that the children with a mom and dad are not normal. And yeah, I think there just has to be a lot more of an open conversation on this. And people are very scared and it's difficult. You don't want to offend people, but we have to talk about the data. Look, this is a very uncomfortable conversation to be having. We're talking about the sex ed thing. What we don't teach women is about their fertility.

1:12:22Yep. And how fertility decreases over age until they come to a point when it becomes very unlikely, then impossible.

1:12:28Francis Foster:Yeah. And with some women, you know, the older they get, fertility sometimes falls off a cliff. It's just an unfortunate truth. And sometimes a woman has an abortion early on. That may be one of the few chances she actually has of having a child. And it would be, I'm sure there are women out there who had an abortion and then subsequently tried to have kids, couldn't have it later on in life. I mean, not only the regret that they must feel, it must be awful. Awful. Yeah, you're right. We came across a story in a Facebook forum or something like that where it was a 34-year-old woman who was posting about, should I get an abortion?

1:13:07I just feel like I'm so young to have a child. My partner and I, we've only been together seven years. I mean, I think we have an infantilization of 20s and 30s, don't we? If you get to 34 and you think you're still too young to have a child, too young, gosh. You're one year away from having a geriatric pregnancy, as unpleasant as that term might be for people. It's true, and a lot of people don't realize that. And I think, you know, we're plugged, even on the tube right now in London, there's adverts for IVF. And the Scottish government are actually promoting programs trying to get girls in universities to donate eggs for money so that older people can have children.

1:13:46And we're kind of locked into this weird kind of technological dystopian, like, leave it too late because you want to do other things first. And don't worry, we'll fix it with technology when you're ready in your 40s. Very few people are told that IVF most times doesn't work. it's very expensive and very hard to go through especially on a woman's body it's you know it's extremely challenging we're not told any of this reality we just promoted it as don't worry that's the solution once you've kind of done your career thing and you're ready to settle down but the structures of society kind of pushes in that way don't they you're kind of by the time you're hitting your 30s you spent most of your 20s in education and then you know going through the grad programs and internships and early career there isn't really um in the structures of society right now, we're not encouraged to settle down earlier and to think about, can we push some of that stuff later?

1:14:33Because we can do it later and we can have, it's easier to have kids earlier. I think, yeah, that's another thing we have to be talking about and being more honest about. And the statistics, because even after 30, it starts to fall on a 35 and a 40 and trails off.

1:14:47Francis Foster:And on that note, before we head to Substack, where our audience get to ask you their questions, what is the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? I've prepared for this for five years. that is a joke but it's not a joke um i think um i hear a lot right now on the rights about the need for restoring a christian west for restoring christian society especially in the context of immigration is often kind of now used as a broad word buzzword of um we want to have a christian nation what i think we're not talking about within that is that a christian nation is a nation of christian people and a lot of us um i don't know if there's a reckoning yet of what that means personally in our personal lives.

1:15:27I think, for example, the Tory party, we saw it kind of fall apart from being a party that valued conservatism. But then when it left that moorings of why, of that kind of basis of faith and Christianity, it started promoting all sorts of liberal ideals and then eventually just disintegrated as something that doesn't promote conservatism at all over the last 14 years. They were the ones that brought in the prayer bans and pills by post-abortion and various other measures that were very anti-Christian. And so I think we have to recognize that on the right in the UK, if we are trying to put in conservatism without Christ, that is also just going to be baseless and more or less and drift at some point.

1:16:06I think we have to get back to those Christian ideals and apply them in our personal lives first. We can't be out there promoting marriage and family and babies and then have our right-wing politicians really, they're sleeping around being unfaithful to their partner and not promoting this in their personal lives. So I think we have a lot of work

1:16:21Francis Foster:to do. Right. I think that's why we're failing. We know some of these people. Good luck with that. I think that's why we're failing. I think unless we adopt this properly, wholesale, this is a thing not to get it not too far into, but there are a lot of

1:16:41Francis Foster:supposedly Christian or moral people who are not very Christian or moral, and a lot of non-Christian people who actually do stick with those values. The values are important. That's what really matters. But then we get into a whole argument about where do you get them, blah, blah, blah. Let's say that for another time. Head on over to Substack where we continue the conversation. What is your opinion on how society should deal with cancel culture as a consequence of distasteful but free speech? How can we support families better so an unexpected pregnancy is not seen as the end of the world?

1:17:23We'll be right back.