What Rogan Gets Wrong About Reproductive Rights

Joe Rogan has become a proxy of sorts for America’s everyman, which is an impressive feat for someone worth a quarter billion dollars. It’s hard to be fabulously wealthy and relatable, but Rogan mostly pulls it off. He shares that in common with the President, who is also routinely derided by the establishment but beloved by the disaffected. I consider that a mark in each man’s favor. Rogan has built an empire by talking to an eclectic mix of people on a wide range of topics, but they’re almost all men and almost all entertainers (or entertainer adjacent). Of his 68 guests so far this year, only three have been women. It’s no surprise, then, that Rogan’s audience is also mostly male. And those men are disproportionately young and disproportionately unmarried—which makes them disproportionately sympathetic to abortion. Not only have they been relentlessly conditioned to view any objection to abortion as misogynistic, they’ve discovered that abortion offers tremendous short-term benefits to sexually libertine men. Rogan is neither young nor single himself but firmly shares the conviction…

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JD Vance & the Politics of Abortion

I like JD Vance. He seems a remarkably competent man with an even more remarkable backstory. He speaks well, he debates well, he breaks the fourth wall well, but he doesn't talk about abortion well. I noticed this first at last year’s vice presidential debate and then again in his interview with Joe Rogan. As someone who knows a bit about abortion and thinks about it quite often, it became immediately apparent to me that JD Vance doesn’t—which is understandable. He has a lot of other things to worry about. And just because someone is educated, articulate, and pro-life doesn’t mean they can make a compelling case against abortion. They may not even have a working knowledge of the facts. Few people do, which is why so many “civilized” folks put up with such a barbaric practice. Is there anything in the world more quintessentially profane than child sacrifice? But that, of course, is not how it’s presented. Abortion isn’t sold as an ancient evil.…

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Charities Can Die So Long as Charity Doesn’t

I’ve been thinking lately about the inherent dangers of charities. And churches. Not the universal church—which can’t be seen, but the ones with buildings and budgets. I say this not as someone looking in from the outside, but as someone who’s been the director of a pro-life charity for more than 20 years and been in the church for significantly longer. Here’s my working theory. The older and larger an organization becomes—be it ministry or otherwise, the more susceptible it is to mismanagement and corruption. There are simply more ways to go astray.

As organizations get bigger, the number of less productive staff invariably increases. It’s driven by that pesky little Pareto principle—or 80/20 rule—which states that 20% of any given labor force does 80% of the work. The exact percentages vary, but the general principle is fairly ironclad. It’s the same one you hear bemoaned from the pulpit whenever a capital campaign is underway. No matter the church, you can rest assured that an exceedingly small percentage of congregants do most of the giving. On the labor side, not only does growth diminish…

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The Abortion Catastrophe of 2023 (May Have Been Overblown)

Last March, Guttmacher gleefully announced that “Despite Bans, (the) Number of Abortions in the United States Increased in 2023.” According to their estimates, America’s 2023 abortion total came in at 1,037,000. They have since amended that to roughly 1,029,000, but that still represents the largest year-over-year increase in nearly 50 years. I called it “The Abortion Catastrophe of 2023”—not least because it came directly on the heels of the largest drop in total abortions in American history.  But now it’s January, 2025, and January is the month in which I’ve historically published Abort73's own annual abortion estimate based on available state level data. This year, of course, Guttmacher beat us to the punch—for the first time ever—but it’s increasingly looking like they got it wrong.

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The Good Samaritan Wasn’t Really Pro-Life. A Lesson from Alabama.

It infuriates me to hear people sing the praises of the Good Samaritan. The only thing he did was to save some guy from death and pay for his immediate recovery—as if that’s all it means to be pro-life. Notice that he didn’t lift a finger to do anything for this man down the road. His kindness was one and done. Sayonara, friend. Have a nice life! Did this so-called Good Samaritan bother to pay for the beaten man’s safe transport to Jericho? No. Did he offer to cover any medical expenses he might incur from future attacks or injuries? Nope. Did he at least secure for the victim a good job that would offer him a living wage and paid paternity leave? Again, he did not. He didn’t care at all about this beaten stranger once he’d recovered. He simply abandoned him to his own devices. And yet we celebrate this man for his supposed love of neighbor. It’s outrageous.

In case you missed the irony, let me assure you that everything I’ve said to this point is complete and utter rubbish. The Good Samaritan is the Christ-ordained model of who your neighbor is and what it means…

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The Most and Least Important Abortion has Ever Been

Abortion has never been more important to its proponents than it is right now. Nor less important to those who oppose it. I suppose that makes sense in the aftermath of Dobbs. Roe was a cancer that had to be removed, but even the best surgeries don’t leave you whole. Two years in, the recovery has been nothing if not painful. According to Gallup, abortion supporters are now twice as likely to only vote for likeminded candidates as abortion opponents—marking the third consecutive year in which one-issue voting has tilted firmly towards abortion. It used to be that abortion opponents were the more ideologically committed, but that equation has flipped since President Biden took office. And though polling results should always be taken with a grain of salt, this is one I’m inclined to believe—for no other reason than this. Politically speaking, I have never cared less about abortion…

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