Funding for To the Contrary provided by Coming up on To the Contrary, Pope Francis condemns surrogacy as deplorable.

Then abortion, politics.

It's kind of like a tennis match in the lower and higher court being batted about.

Will this help Democratic candidates and President Biden in November?

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, Pope Francis is calling for a global ban on surrogacy.

Where a woman carries and delivers a child for another woman.

The pontiff calls the practice deplorable and condoning human trafficking.

The latter may be a new twist for the church, but Catholic doctrine has long banned anything but natural pregnancy and delivery.

In the U.S., surrogacy is illegal in a number of states and only allowed in some others if the surrogate is not paid for her services.

Joining us today, Sam Bennett, New York Amsterdam News.

Carrie Sheffield, Senior Policy Analyst, Independent Women's Forum.

Tiana Lowe Doescher, columnist, The Washington Examiner.

And Keli Goff, political correspondent, Hollywood Reporter.

Also joining us for the first segment is To the Contrary regular Deborah Carnahan.

So it's new that the pope has called this human trafficking, but it's not new that the church has been against surrogacy for a long time.

So what are your thoughts?

Is this going to move the church harder right.

And move church members harder right on women's health issues.

Yeah, Bonnie, that's a great question.

I find it very interesting, the timing that the pope has decided to make this declaration, because, you know, as you stated, this is something that the Catholic Church has not supported in the past, hasn't really addressed that much.

But with all this talk about a woman's uterus and a woman's body and more and more restrictions on us here in the U.S., I think the timing's quite interesting.

I think he decided it was a good time to strike while the iron was hot - Meaning he's doing this to play into the elections, the upcoming elections.

I don't think so much the elections, but I do think it's for getting support for the church's position.

We are seeing more and more restrictions on women's bodies, and this is just another restriction.

However, you feel about surrogacy personally doesn't really matter in the sense of protecting a woman's right to do with her body what she chooses to reproductively.

So I'm not a Catholic.

I am a practicing Christian.

And like a lot of practicing Christians, I've been a big fan of what some of us call cool Pope for being more inclusive and widening the tent and welcoming more people into the fold.

I actually think the timing is related to that.

There was quite a bit of blowback among conservatives of faith, including in the Catholic Church, about the blessing of same sex couples.

And my sense was that this was sort of a way of him signaling to the more conservative members of the flock that I still got your back.

But, of course, I think it's unfortunate because literally, Bonnie, there was a priest that was just defrocked for running off with a teenage girl.

Literally, this is like a week or two ago.

There was another priest just arrested in Poland for apparently partaking in some orgy where someone died of an overdose.

I say all this to say that I think the pope has bigger fish to fry.

And I like, as we tend to say, you know, those of us from the South, and I kind of like to see him focusing on some some more, I think, substantive issues than this one.

Does anybody else see it this way?

So he says, will bless you can bless same sex marriages and he'll say when asked about homosexuality in the church.

Who am I to judge?

And the LGBTQ plus plus movement is mainly I mean, let's face it, like everything else in the world is run largely by men.

There are certainly women who are very active in it.

But I but the power goes to the men.

And so he would a he would praise opening rights that affect men more or or certainly just as much as they affect women, but take away rights that mainly affect women.

Does anybody else see it that way?

Bonnie I believe that it's a matter of a victimless crime versus a crime with the victim.

To be clear, I am not saying that any of these things are crimes, but I'm saying as the Catholic Church considers that right, one same sex marriage is viewed as an offense against the institution of marriage.

According to Catholic theology.

I am not a Catholic.

I'm Eastern Orthodox.

I believe that it is a complicated issue.

But they're saying you can still be blessed even if you are not in full communion with the church.

In the same way if you are divorced, which the Catholic Church doesn't recognize, you can still be blessed even if you're divorced, right?

So it's just extending something that's logical and something that the church seems as.

There is not a person that is victimized by a same sex marriage.

They're saying it runs afoul of the institution.

By contrast, Pope Francis is speaking from a human rights perspective when it comes to surrogacy.

And look from a libertarian legal perspective, I have no problem with surrogacy as long as it's consensual.

But let's remember, consent is consent only means that something is legal or baseline ethical.

It does not mean that it is a positive good.

If someone has sex and you ask, did they consent, that means was it rape or not?

Not.

Was this a positive development when let me turn this back (Talking over each other) back to the pope and surrogacy it was pointed out in one of the articles I read that surrogacy was approved in the Bible when Abraham and Sarah were married and she was too old to conceive.

She sent Abraham to have sex with her slave, I guess.

Hagar And they conceived and that was called by some scholars, surrogacy I don't see it the same at all because surrogates today don't have sex with the man whose sperm is going to impregnate them.

They.

It's all done in a lab.

Christianity obviously does not follow a lot of Mosaic Law Christians.

We all believe in monogamy.

So we obviously are not practicing polygamy.

We aren't practicing honor killings.

We do not believe in that.

Blood sacrifices for covenants.

Right.

So I think pointing to the Old Testament as a model King David, wonderful man, I don't think that we would endorse all of King David's behaviors as the paragon of Christianity.

We want to follow what Christ did, right?

I am just a the pipeline here.

I did not come up with these thoughts I'm saying scholars some scholars are saying this now.

So the concern is less is less about the ethics in a vacuum and more about the chance that a woman, let's say not in America, let's say a wealthy couple in America goes to a poor woman in sub-Saharan Africa, she can consent to be a surrogate.

But is that ethical?

I don't know.

And that's what I think the Pope is, is looking at the extreme cases where it absolutely can be exploitative practice.

Well, I think the only person who can answer that question is for the person herself.

And in countries where people are starving and need money badly, I think that they're going to have they're going to be upset if that right to earn money that way is taken away from them.

I'm not judging the person that accepts the money.

I will judge the person that offers someone knowing that there is a power imbalance.

And that just might be the difference between millennials and boomers.

This will affect the LGBTQ community a lot.

There are a lot of same sex couples, especially the male same sex couples, you know, who use markets to create a family.

The second thing is, once again, we're talking about a woman's right to choose, what to do with her body reproductively.

And the statement by the pope did not have anything to do with exceptions or ethicalness.

It was just deplorable, period.

The end.

So we keep coming back to a woman's right to autonomy over her reproductive organs.

And the Catholic Church seems to like to tell us a lot what we can and cannot do.

I'm not Catholic, but I have a lot of friends who are Catholic.

I was just spent some time last year with the cardinal of New York.

So from what I understand, what he's trying to do here in the broader context, you have to look at it.

It's not just about surrogate.

It's the broader spectrum of natural birth and natural procreation.

So as I understand it, the Catholic Church also bans IVF.

They ban things like egg freezing because that's not perceived as natural law.

And so that's really the broader context of it.

They wouldn't say this.

This has to do with going after women.

It has to do with protecting natural law as God intended it.

But I think in the case of surrogacy, I actually completely separate creating life and nurturing life.

And and same with IVF.

I support surrogacy and I support IVF.

I don't support abortion.

In one case, you are creating life and you are nurturing it and you're valuing it, and in abortion you are destroying life.

So I disagree with the Pope on this front, and I think he needs to read an economic textbook.

I disagree with Keli I love you, too.

But I think what he's doing is wrong on so many things and he needs to read economics textbooks instead of going after surrogacy.

Let me just throw this out there.

The Catholic Church is losing adherents in educated countries, i.e., Europe.

The churches are empty and being sold off.

And also in the United States, it's the only place they're gaining adherents is, especially in this country, is among immigrants who come to this country with, you know, obviously poorer and less education than most Americans have access to or they wouldn't.

That's part a big part of why they come here.

So is the pope hurting the church by positioning the church against surrogacy?

In other words, surrogacy by Catholics would would produce more children who would presumably become Catholics.

Well, we ought to consider the context, Bonnie.

Pope Francis is from Argentina.

I visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires, where he was a bishop right.

Surrogacy is a different issue in in South America, where there are much greater concerns of the exploitation of women.

Right.

You can say, oh, is it better to offer a woman in a third world country the chance to prostitute herself and her work in a sweatshop for money from a purely libertarian perspective?

Sure.

If.

If that's all you believe.

I just let me point out rolling out.

So let me point out, though, I've been to almost 100 countries in my life.

I've reported from many of them, particularly poorer countries like Peru.

And it's easy for us to sit here in our hotel rooms, our living rooms with, you know, cameras and and all the luxuries of life.

Not not that we're all rich or anything like that, but we're certainly not poor.

And it's another thing to be a woman who lives in a shack.

And you ask them, would they want to make $20,000 for being pregnant for a year?

And they're going to tell you, of course, I just I think it's very, very that we should make judgments about what they do when most of us don't have an idea how they do it.

Now, coming back to the surrogacy, I would like to point out I would not expect a Catholic priest or a bishop to say, we're not attacking women.

This isn't about women, really.

When people come after you, they point the finger and say, I'm coming after you, I'm coming after your rights.

There's always some bigger picture that they're trying to protect.

So this definitely is interfering in a woman's right to choose, what to do with her body and to create happiness for another couple.

And I would think the Catholic Church in one sense would support that.

As you point out, Bonnie probably has, you know, create more Christians, create more Catholics.

I couldn't agree with you more.

But very briefly, surrogacy like abortion, if you make it illegal, then it will cease to be a safe practice.

I think that's one of the most important things of this.

And honestly, having been sexually trafficked myself as a girl, I can speak with authority that there's a far I think the pope is making a solicious, an incorrect analogy between surrogacy and human trafficking.

I don't think that is a correct analogy.

Totally.

- All right.

Thank you, Debra, for joining us for this segment.

From religion and surrogacy to politics and reproductive rights, After the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a nationwide right to abortion, the battle moved to the states.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 68% of OB-GYNs believe the Supreme Court.

Dodd's case has made managing medical emergencies more difficult.

64% say the ruling has increased pregnancy related mortality.

This week, the Supreme Court granted cert in a case about an Idaho law that punishes doctors who perform abortions.

The Biden administration is trying to overturn the state's abortion ban on the basis it contravenes a federal law requiring hospitals that receive Medicare funds to provide emergency care.

The Supreme Court will decide the case later this year.

The question pundits and observers are asking is whether the backlash generated by supporters of abortion rights will help Democratic congressional candidates and President Joe Biden in the fall.

So, Keli Goff, the fact that this issue keeps coming back and coming back to their state situations, the woman who late last year couldn't get permission from Texas to have an abortion because her fetus was going to die anyway and went to another state that got a lot of publicity.

There have been other really, and she wanted children.

She had to and she wanted more.

So this was not an abortion by somebody first time pregnant and just was too young or didn't have enough money to have a baby.

How do you see this playing out?

Is it just is it playing into the Democrats hands that it just keeps coming up and it's the issue that just won't go away?

And we already know from so many states that it hurts Republicans And I wish I could give a less annoying, TV friendly answer, which is.

But the real answer is it depends on where you are, right?

If you look at the data.

It really depends on the district, how much the abortion issue moves.

It's not even on a state level.

It really is on specific districts.

So if you're looking at the data and you can see how wildly Trump won, that will probably give you an indication as to how much the needle will move.

Now, again, me giving a bad TV answer is that my question is how much that's going to affect the presidential run Because even among Maga supporters, you're not really seeing that the reason they're attracted to Donald Trump is because of the issue of abortion.

Right.

They're attracted to him for a whole host of reasons that we probably don't have time to discuss.

So that is me saying to you that for some congressional candidates abortion will be the make or break issue.

But I think Bill Lee had it right in saying that if you actually look at the data, some of the races that we're blaming on the issue of abortion, it actually has to do with other issues in that state, whether it's inflation, whether it's other things.

Okay, Sam, your thoughts as having run a national women's organization for many years and particularly one that trained women to run for Congress and other elective offices, how do you think this issue will play out to the Democrats advantage?

This year?

Well, I think to you know, Keli's point, it does clearly it matters by district.

But when you look at the overall polling information fully two thirds of Americans are in favor of bringing Roe v Wade back.

And that number tilts even stronger when it's independents that are polled who are the key linchpin for any win.

So take for granted the district, Bonnie, where I ran for Congress right in in 2008, I was running against the lone Republican who still took meetings with the Planned Parenthood.

His aunt was the founder of Republicans for Choice.

Pamela, Pamela down.

I think it was his aunt.

And so for us, abortion was neutral.

Right.

But now that Susan Wylde, wonderful Democrat, is in that seat now and Charlie Dent has moved on to being a commentator for CNN and one of the chief political opponents, vocal opponents to Trump's, as he calls it, regime.

She is being attacked viciously and all she has to do is talk about abortion.

Bonnie, and her numbers go right back up.

So I think it is by district.

But for Democrats writ large, this is clearly a winning issue.

Every time it's been put on a ballot, even in conservative states, all seven times, the referendums won the day.

I think this is a key political strategy in this upcoming election.

Yeah, I mean, I, I agree with what Keli said, that it really is very nuanced based on the geography of in terms of how the intensity of how people feel about abortion.

And again, I'm speaking for myself personally because Independent Women's Forum is does not take a position on abortion.

I am pro-life.

I rejoiced when Roe v Wade fell because I thought that it could help contribute to a culture of life in our country where even if you are pro-choice or pro abortion, whatever label you want to use, I think it's unfortunate that the AP did away with the term pro-life.

I think people should be able to call themselves what they want.

I call myself pro-life.

You could call yourself pro-choice.

But according to AP, I can't call myself pro-life.

At any rate, the the the notion that left and right should be able to come together or pro-choice pro life should come together to work on preventing abortion.

To say that this is that even if you don't agree with me as a pro-life person, you can respect that there are hundreds, potentially or tens of millions of people who share my view.

And since we are living in democracy, then let's work on areas where we can reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and find areas of agreement.

I think that that conversation should be had more.

Instead of focusing on a lot of the headlines, you talk about one that you mentioned the case in Texas, the vast majority of abortions are not these headlines, stories of these extreme cases of extreme medical emergencies or rape or incest.

Rape and incest cases are only about 1.5% of abortions.

The vast majority are what I would describe as abortions of convenience and for economic reasons.

A lot of them happen because of male abandonment.

I think we should talk more about how abortion has enabled the expansion of the male libido without consequences, that the fact that ... -There's not no consequences Most states do chase fathers, married or not, for, you know, payments for child support, but they don't chase unborn parent fathers yet.

Although I was working for America first policy and unborn unborn, I was in pregnant mothers that right.

They only do it once.

There's an actual human being living on its own.

And what I'm saying is that I believe that fathers should be held accountable immediately at conception.

I believe that fathers should be held responsible.

And I think that we would have fewer abortions The state doesn't even know who the father is until it says so on the birth certificate.

Well, I think in the vast majority of cases, you would be able to tell and I would imagine this is very I don't know for sure, certain.

But perhaps there could be genetic testing.

I know where you can determine who it is afterwards.

But but for most women, most women know who the father is.

I think you figured out the way to make abortion legal again, because if men start having to deal with responsibility the moment of conception, I think their attitudes will change a lot.

I actually think this is very you're on to something.

And this is an interesting note.

In fact, I actually was working for the America First Policy Institute, and we actually did some polling that I requested and we worked with with Scott Rasmussen, you know, very well-known pollster.

And what we found was that I can pull up the statistics right now.

I think it was something like, let me pull it up right here.

70, let's see.

71% of Americans said that when a man gets a woman pregnant, is he already a father with responsibilities to both the mother and the child?

71% of Americans agree.

And he .also - I agree.

I just doubt a lot of the men in Congress do.

I'm actually can't tell you, Carrie I think you're on to something.

And I think you're actually hitting at the heart of this.

All right.

But we're getting we're getting far away from the point which let me bring Tiana in.

Tiana.

Is this a dish?

Is this issue a winner for Democrats in the fall?

When you look at the granular data of how Americans generally feel about abortion, they don't morally love it for purely elective reasons.

They don't want it in the third trimester.

However, they essentially want a 15 week abortion ban where no questions asked.

You can be allowed to get an abortion up until 15 weeks and then after that, only exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

-How do you explain -Bonnie -Ohio.

and Kansas?

So that's the point I was getting to, Bonnie.

But when we put these up to the test, Republicans lose every single time, including in Virginia, when Glenn Youngkin offered exactly that, a 15 week abortion ban.

And it's because Republicans have relinquished all trust on the issue.

Voters do not trust Republicans as far as they can see them.

And why?

Because you hear insane Republicans talking about the need to bring Griswold back to the Supreme Court to debate, you know, the legality of your right to contraception.

You hear Republicans refuse to work with the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's talked about let's work with Ted Cruz to make oral contraceptives over the counter nationwide, as they should be, because they're safer than Tylenol.

Statistically speaking, they hear the fact that Republicans are not emphasizing adoption, deregulation, making it easier, you know, focusing on, as Carrie said, making it that way.

men at the moment of conception are responsible, even in terms of backpay, for assisting 50% of a woman's medical bills related to a pregnancy, which I all pro-lifers should absolutely agree with.

Let me ask.

Wait,wait,wait you, you left out one very important factor in why Republicans aren't trusting the, you know, their party leadership anymore.

How about the ex-president who's been indicted civilly and criminally all over the country?

The president is one of the only people in the entire party that knows how to message on abortion without alienating 75% of the country.

Donald Trump emphasizes the need that we will never get rid of the rape, incest, life of the mother restriction exceptions.

He emphasizes that bringing it back to the States is good, but at 5 to 6 weeks, a woman does not know.

It often, often does not know if she is pregnant.

So be cautious if you aren't, you know, in R plus 25 states, maybe don't pass it because it will backfire on you.

And that Republicans are the ones that on a on a national level, they're the ones that are not extremists.

Donald Trump does not embrace a 15 week federal abortion ban.

Most Republicans with the with the with the stark exceptions of Tim Scott, agree that abortion is not a federal issue.

It should be up to the states and that is a good thing.

Also, Donald Trump also said that DeSantis was wrong in the bill that he passed, the bill that he passed in Florida on abortion.

And so the last thing I want to say, Bonnie, is that very quickly, I think for younger women who were apathetic years ago, this is a turnout issue.

All right.

Thank you all for a very engaging show.

That's it for this edition.

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