Abortion: An Act of Urban Monoculture Worship

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the complex and controversial topic of abortion, challenging both progressive and conservative viewpoints. This thought-provoking discussion covers:

* The problematic "worship" of abortion in progressive circles

* A critical examination of Catholic teachings on conception and life

* The scientific timeline of fetal development and its ethical implications

* The impact of IVF on Catholic fertility rates and religious survival

* A biblical perspective on sin, pleasure, and human dignity

* The unintended consequences of extreme anti-abortion stances

* Proposals for more ethical and humane abortion practices

Whether you're pro-life, pro-choice, or somewhere in between, this video offers a fresh perspective on one of the most divisive issues of our time. The Collinses bring their unique blend of scientific knowledge, philosophical inquiry, and personal experience to this challenging topic.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] right now in the world, more children are aborted per year than humans die. Like, post birth humans die. Um, And you

Trans woman to have a successful uterus transplant, ovaries and eggs included. And I want to be the first trans woman to have an abortion.

Get that fetus, kill that fetus. Rack, rack, you good rack.

You mean, I'll never know what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out?

Malcolm Collins: I realized that because it's a religious act for them almost

I hope and pray to God it don't feed us as a song. Cause I want it to feel pain when I eject it from my own

Malcolm Collins: if you put a fetus in a, in a human woman's body, it will eventually become a human being. And

but an egg and a sperm on their [00:01:00] own, they won't eventually become a human being. And I was like, you just added a little word there, if you put them in a woman's body, if you put an egg in a sperm in a woman's body, just like if you put a fetus in a woman's body, it becomes a human being.

Simone Collins: It is now standard medical practice after 15 weeks to use anesthesia during fetal surgeries. But this is really important. And this is going to come up a little bit later in my thoughts on this subject. Pain medication is not standard practice in abortions. there's this one part of the medical establishment that is like, okay, this is a baby, we're going to save your baby.

Don't worry, mother, it's going to be fine. And then there's this totally sort of other industry, which is like, this is a cluster of tissue. There is, there is, there's cardiac activity. Let's, you know, you need to exercise your right. This is not human

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we're going to be doing an episode because this has been [00:02:00] increasingly happening to me where I have been updating my views on various subjects from back when I used to just be in the urban monoculture, you know, when you were growing up, you grew up in central San Francisco.

And so you grew up really inundated with these far lefty ideas about everything. I grew up sort of all over the place, different you know, boarding schools and stuff like that. But a lot of them were in New England. And so I was heavily influenced by those cultures.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: And you know, when you're in the urban monoculture, this, this far progressive culture, you don't even really question things about abortion, right?

You should always It's

Simone Collins: my body, my choice.

Malcolm Collins: And I remember in high school when I, you know, slept around a lot, you know, I've mentioned this on other podcasts and, you know, by the time I got to college, I slept with over a hundred people and [00:03:00] I I don't think that's a good thing to do. I would clarify. I think that I associated it with status, and then I began to, you know, like the machine that Malcolm is, if I'm like, okay, you know, this thing has value in society, I must orient my life around maximizing Right, if

Simone Collins: sex is your objective function, it's your objective function, you gotta maximize it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's what the environment of this modern, youthfull culture taught me, right? So, I would try to Engage with it as much as possible, and I remember thinking oh my gosh, like whenever the abortion stuff would come up. I won't be able to have sex as freely

Simone Collins: as a manslaughter abortion is very important.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Fewer women will want to sleep with me and they may get pregnant and then decide not to have an abortion. And then I didn't even think about that. This election is

Simone Collins: screwed. All the men who want to have sex can't vote. Yeah. I, one of

Malcolm Collins: my favorite things is these, these progressives where you'll have them standing out and they'll being like, [00:04:00] With these new abortion restrictions.

I'm just, I guess I'm not going to be able to sleep with any man whenever they feel like it. Like one woman you were talking about in a podcast was like, you know what? I'm seriously thinking about now only sleeping with men. I'd be comfortable raising a child with.

And it's like, You should have probably been, it was a societal mistake. And I can tell you as a man who got full access to the sexual buffet, that the progressive commons, one of the core things that moved me away from all of that and that lifestyle is I was doing that. I had access to all the sex I wanted from anyone I wanted whenever I wanted.

And it didn't feel good

Simone Collins: at

Malcolm Collins: the beginning because it wasn't really the sex. That was the core thing that felt good. The validation, the achieving something that was supposed to be hard. And that gave me status was in my community.

But the sex [00:05:00] itself just wasn't that important. In terms of the happiness it gave me, and a lot of people are like, well, then that means you're not, no, you're lying to yourself, or you just haven't had a lot of sex.

Like, I was very sexually experimental, I tried all this stuff, it was not, there's just not that much pleasure to be had there. I mean, it's,

Simone Collins: I think it's very similar to food. In that it can be very good, but also in the end.

Malcolm Collins: So what I'm saying is like, you're not really the, the, the, and this is the thing about traditions.

And I mentioned this in another podcast recently is the traditions we have been in society are not like the random opinions of old people. They are ideas that have been honed intergenerationally for thousands of years. Okay. When they came to me and they go, don't live a life just for sex. You know, you won't really enjoy it.

You should focus on getting married and having a lot of kids. That's where fulfillment comes from. And I was like, old man, you don't know what's up. And now like I'm older, I have more [00:06:00] experience. And I was like, oh, that was 100 percent correct. And I, and I should note that I didn't get that from my parents.

My parents actually told me like, my mom was really like, yeah, you should go out and expect that a thing to do. Oh, my parents too. Go out, experiment. Oh yeah. They always are trying to push you to experiment and you never did. You, you rebelled. But in updating my views on abortion, I've noticed a few things.

So one thing I want to start talking about is the weird thing. Progressive worshiping of abortion.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: It's something I was sort of blind to. I saw it as a joke or like a radical thing, but I Oh yeah.

Simone Collins: For example, in Bojack Horseman, the, the song, the abortion song by Awkwafina. Sextina,

Malcolm Collins: Aquafina

America, get your uteruses tarp. I'm a baby killer. Baby killer makes me horny. Get that fetus, kill that fetus. Down face, b*****s in my cross face. No, I'ma have abortions always. And sometimes I do have doubts and oh, it makes [00:07:00] me weep. And sometimes I do have doubts and oh, it makes me weep. I hope and pray to God it don't feed us as a song. Cause I want it to feel pain when I eject it from my own world.

Blah, has the concept of women having choices gone too far?

Malcolm Collins: but I've also seen it, like, there was a trans person trying to get a uterus transfer, and when asked why they wanted the uterus transfer, they wanted the uterus transfer to get an abortion, they wanted to get pregnant Transcribed And then have an abortion.

Trans woman to have a successful uterus transplant, ovaries and eggs included. And I want to be the first trans woman to have an abortion.

Malcolm Collins: Right, get that fetus, kill that fetus, get that fetus, kill that fetus. And it's like, whoa, like that, you, what, [00:08:00] you think that's okay? Like, why would you, and I realized that because it's a religious act for them almost. And when they, when they talk about it and you hear other progressives talking about it, did you enter like this special club?

When you have an abortion that makes you more officially progressive, and this is wild because in South Park, you know, this is something Mr. Garrison wanted to do when he was getting his gender reassignment and it was like a joke.

Mrs. Garrison. You can't have an abortion. Don't you tell me what I can and can't do with my body! A woman has a right to choose! You can't get pregnant. But I missed my period. You can't have periods either. You mean, I'll never know what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out? This would mean I'm not really a woman, it's, I'm just a, I'm just a guy with a mutilated penis!

Basically, yes. Oh boy, do I feel like a [00:09:00] jackass.

Malcolm Collins: And now it's like a mainstream thing in the progressive movement. And it's like, how did this become a mainstream thing?

And I think similar to like, how did it become a mainstream thing for progressives to fight that the government should give pills that would only be relevant to people going. To regular orgies with strangers. Like, why is that something the government needs to subsidize? Like, it is because it represents a me first attitude.

And a never have to deal with any mental consequences attitude.

Like we are, for example, not like if you're doing a very, and we'll get into like what we've actually come to after analyzing all the evidence and analyzing all the arguments on both sides, I wouldn't be against an early abortion in regards to a person was raped or something like that.

But like the person should still feel really bad about it and treat it as a weighty choice. The reason why, when I say feel bad about it, I mean, like, it's not like a small thing, okay. To do [00:10:00] this When progressives elevate it in this religious like way, I think the purpose of this is to remove any weight from the choice of abortion.

And this has become so severe that I was looking at one statistic set, and right now in the world, more children are aborted per year than humans die. Like, post birth humans die. Um, And you, I gave you the statistic, you were like, this can't be true. So, in the United Nations, 61 million people died in 2023.

Okay. Unintended pregnancy, so, so there are sorry, how many unintended? There are roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies per year between 2015 and 2019 of these unintended pregnancies. 61 percent ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year. So there are around 73 million abortions per year and around 61 million [00:11:00] people die per year.

So the. Just the, the lackadaisicalness with which it's treated by progressives is absolutely neonas to me. And let's also talk about the development of the fetus at this point as well. Actually, no, what I'll do is I'll, I'll, I'll structure this argument a few ways. So first we need to ask the obvious sort of question in the room.

Simone Collins: Does

Malcolm Collins: life begin at conception?

And we have a longer video where we talk about our views on this particular subject. My views on this have updated a little, but not much. I spent a lot more time studying and watching the Catholic views on this and body. And I will play some clips from a video here that get the synthesis of like the most popular arguments they have.

I think itfor me, it all comes down to, um, the nature of a thing. So what is thehow do you know what's the nature of a thing? Well, the nature of a thing is the what it is ness of a thing, right? How do you discover, though, the nature of a thing? is you have to look at the what is it [00:12:00] for ness of the thing, right? So, what it is ness is like, okay, that's the thing, that's the nature.

How do you discover the nature? By looking at the what it's for ness of the thing. What is sex for? What's the nature of sex? Well, in order to understand the nature of sex, we have to find out the what it's for ness of sex.

So, what is sex for? You'd realize it's for two things. It is for procreation and for, uh, the unity of the couple and that's, again, that's not, that's not me making something up. That's not me saying, well, that's the religious answer. It's, it's just, that's the, that's the objective answer.

That's what sex is for. That's the nature of sex.

Malcolm Collins: And when I've talked to different Catholics, I keep getting the same basic argument. And the art they've chosen their

Simone Collins: message. That's good consistency.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I like it that it's consistent. I don't like it that it's a pagan argument. Well, It's based on Aristotelian ideas about what a thing is and not on the Bible.

I mean, I see why if you actually go to the Bible, the Bible is very clear. Life begins before conception. I knew you before you were in [00:13:00] your mother's womb, you know?

And this is what we believe, you know, we believe in predestination and God definitely knows you before conception. And that if I'm really looking for the point of the beginning of an individual human's life, it's with their gametes.

But They're not even really, I think. No, it's, it's with their actions and decisions.

Simone Collins: It's with, it's, it's with their.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but we, we, we, we can talk about that in different ways. But the basic logic that they use is sex as an act is for making children. And so using sex for something else is sinful.

So that's, that's, that's one argument about like sex for any other reason. And, and, and, and, or It's

Simone Collins: not supported in the Bible.

Malcolm Collins: That's not supported in the Bible, by the way. Yeah, Song of

Simone Collins: Solomon, for example, supports non procreative sex within marriage. There's no prohibition in the Bible against infertile couples who are married having sex.

The emphasis in the Bible, and this is very clear, is it's sex within marriage. is permitted, [00:14:00] but it doesn't need to be procreative. The elements where suddenly non procreative sex is considered not okay, that was completely formulated by the church later. It is not biblically based.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. So, so, to me, this argument of like sex, is for creating humans.

Therefore, that's the only way you should be creating humans. It's sort of like legs are for walking. Therefore, cars are a sin or , eyes are for seeing. Therefore, glasses are a sin. Like just the, the logical structure of this argument is genuinely bizarre to me. And then they'll say things like in the video, he has this one line where he's like, well, I mean, a human life just begins.

When a, when a fetus is created.

we believe that life begins at conception because it does.

Now, again, again, this isn't like a religious thing. This is life begins at conception because it does. Sex is for procreation and unity because it is, right?

Malcolm Collins: And I'm like, but why? And I [00:15:00] love you in the car this morning. You turn to me and you go, well, there is a level of logical consistency to this point. You said, you see, if you, if you put a fetus in a, in a human woman's body, it will eventually become a human being. And then you're like, yeah.

But an egg and a sperm on their own, they won't eventually become a human being. And I was like, you just added a little word there that made those two things of false equivalency and allowed your little logical trick. You added they, if you put them in a woman's body, if you put an egg in a sperm in a woman's body, just like if you put a fetus in a woman's body, it becomes a human being.

Yeah, or at least

Simone Collins: has the potential because again, even a, an embryo that naturally was fertilized within a woman's fallopian tubes or uterus may not implant or may miscarry, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And so they're, they're just, Ignoring that, but also I think about like the concept of insolement.

So, if [00:16:00] you believe in a sole, like what is that sole binding to? Like, if I cut off my finger, have I lost part of my sole? Like, it does not seem to me that by any logical assumption when you're talking about insolement, that the sole is binding to The just human tissue. Is

Simone Collins: binding. Yeah, but that's, no one ever has made that argument.

The, the, we actually explained it to you. No, they literally

Malcolm Collins: are. They are arguing that the human soul is binding to the developing fetus before it has any neural tissue. As soon as it

Simone Collins: is something that is distinct as its thing, as the thing it will become. And I, I was trying to tell you a lie. I think it's the same thing.

akin to having a shadow. Once you can cast a shadow, you know, you're not going to lose your shadow if you lose a finger. There's no part of your body that your shadow is connected to. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, you have lost. This, this is a point. I actually think that this is really important. You have lost part of your shadow if you lose a finger.

So what is [00:17:00] the thing that must remain intact for your personality, your objectives, your everything like that to maintain and be intact? It's your nervous system. You need a nervous system for insultment to happen. I, I just. Cannot see an argument that the, that my finger, for example, if kept alive for part of me, like it's, it's, it's keeping a part of my soul somewhere else.

Like if I cut off my finger and then I put my finger in like a lab and it's like a growing separate for me has like my soul separated into two, like obviously not. However, what frequently happens after conception is the creation of human identical twins where a single embryo. splits later in the developmental process, but always before the nervous system has begun to develop.

Do I believe that the soul split? No, it's just an installment hadn't happened yet. So this then becomes super important when the nervous system develops to me. But I [00:18:00] also want to go further with this human embryo splitting thing. So chimeras and identical twins, to me, are the strongest argument against the belief that insulment happens at conception.

And here, a bit of history for people who don't know, this is not a traditional Catholic belief. If you talk about the, like, when Catholicism was in its golden age, its greatest philosophers, like Thomas Aquinas and Augustus of Hippo, believed that life began there. At installment. So about 60 to 80 days after conception which is interesting.

The ideas that Catholics use to talk about like, well, you need like the essence of a thing. When does that start came from Aristotle, but even Aristotle thought that life began 60 to 80 days after conception. All of this is a very modern Catholic theology. that was laid down by Pope Pius IX. If you're wondering which Pope this was, this is the guy who did the gay castation, you know, ripping penises off of all the statues.

This is the guy. They were too

Simone Collins: small, Malcolm. It was insulting.

Malcolm Collins: I, [00:19:00] you did the syllabus of errors. The, the, this is the Catholic texts that said the Catholics should try to form a caliphate or a Catholic government system whenever they can.

This is , to me, sort of the epitome of the Catholic Dark Age mindset of you know, we need to erase the people who were culturally above us, like these classical creators and everything like that, because we can't even appreciate their art anymore. We can't even, you know, draw fig leaves on everything.

You know, so. That was the guy who came up with this. But if you're talking chimeras and identical twins, because this to me is by far the strongest point, like God controls how human biology works. The fact that he lets embryos split into identical twins and human chimeras to exist. So what a human chimera is, is sometimes you'll get twins.

So a human will become impregnated with twins. Fraternal twins. The fraternal twins and then these two twins merge always before the nervous system is beginning to develop into a single entity and this entity then develops, believing it is [00:20:00] genetically one person, but it's actually genetically two people.

And the rate of chimeras differs really heavily between different animals. So if you look at something like marmosets, over 50 percent of marmosets are actually chimeras. No

Simone Collins: way.

Malcolm Collins: That's so cool. It is not a biological necessity that human chimeras were viable. God made that biological thing happen. So then do you think that God is regularly killing just random growing fetuses for no reason when he didn't have to?

Or do you think that he waits? Also, if you look at when the body naturally aborts a growing, because A huge number of pregnancies are naturally aborted. What percentage is it? It's like 20%? But it almost always happens before the nervous system starts developing.

Simone Collins: Yeah, quite early.

Malcolm Collins: God created a system that allows our bodies to quickly determine the quality of life that will be had by a certain genetic strain. in it before it becomes a [00:21:00] human. And he signaled this to us very loudly by the creation of Chimeras, by the cre by identical twins, and by literally writing it in the Bible.

Like, like, I don't understand how you can just ignore, like, what's written in the Bible so loudly because, like, pagan philosophers told you this alternate ethical theory. But then, And I want to be as nice as I can when I say this, but from our perspective, whenever I look at my kids and now I'm, I, this is why I take abortion so much more seriously than I did historically.

I'm like, you aren't, and I hate this thing of, of, of you're killing a baby. You're not killing a baby. You're killing a human being who's going to live their entire life. Who's going to have dreams and goals when you tell somebody it's a baby

Simone Collins: and it's a child and it's an adolescent and it's an adult, a parent, a grandparent, a worker, a leader, someone who's going to love people and be loved.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, recently I went to a reunion and I was around all of my nephews and nieces and everything like that. [00:22:00] And it really just hit home for me. Every kid I don't have is somebody who's not going to get to be a teenager. It's somebody who's not going to get to have a first love. Who's not going to get to have a job.

Every time you talk somebody out of IVF for reasons that don't have any biblical back. You are removing a human being from the opportunity to live. Well, and

Simone Collins: just to restate what you're talking about, the sort of realization that, that you and I both had is that we saw people that. We had hung out with when they were just little kids, low agency people, not super terribly interesting, whatever, right?

Not, you're not going to have complex conversations with them. And then in what felt like the blink of an eye here, we are talking with them as adults and realizing, Oh, holy crap. You're a real person. And when a lot of people are thinking, Should I have kids? Should I have a baby? They're literally saying, and I think the wording is part of what influences people's incorrect thinking or in incomplete thinking is they're thinking literally, should I have a baby?

[00:23:00] They're thinking of, what they should be asking is, should

Malcolm Collins: I be denying a human the right to exist? Yeah.

Simone Collins: They're, they're not thinking of an adult with the full range of feelings and, and the complex life of an adult. They're thinking about. A small, low agency human.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and also let's just talk about like the logical insanity of this, right?

Like if you take this mindset, what you're saying is that if a sperm is about to reach an egg and I put down like a metal sheet between them the moment before it happened and it doesn't reach the egg, I have done something of not particularly bad action. But if like a fraction of a second after it hits that egg.

I end up quashing that egg. Now I have killed a human being.

Simone Collins: By Catholic definitions, not by our definitions.

Malcolm Collins: No, not by our definitions. But to me, that's just seems like splitting hairs. It seems like any decision you make that prevents a human being from existing is functionally killing a human. And so from our perspective.[00:24:00]

When, and this is another thing that really gets me the, the Catholic celibacy of the priest caste, that it is a religion that is ruled by people who have sacrificed their children's lives for a chance at power. That is what, as soon as I realized, like when I don't have a kid, I am sacrificing a human life.

To think that you sacrificed all of your children's life, not like you're first born. All of your children's life at a shot of power. That's obviously going to twist your thinking around the value of a human life, and you're going to need to come up with these weird deontological frameworks to not face the horror of the decision that You yourself has have made so I can understand why they need to take this framework because that's a big thing The bible does not say that the priest caste needs to be celibate It has like one line where it is like celibacy is okay for like some holy people or it might have like two lines in Regards to this,

But, you know, it also has lines. To the contrary. [00:25:00] So you can look at something like Corinthian seven, two, that doesn't just explain that, you know, you should get married. But why you should, which is to say. But because the temptation of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman, her own husband. Now. What is it saying?

It's saying. If you build a society or an organization where you don't give men a wife. . What's going to happen is extreme forms of sexual morality. For example, child grape. Which, you know, prescient.

Malcolm Collins: you know Not a hundred percent against it, but it is be fruitful and multiply like this is like a a recurring thing throughout the bible You're supposed to have kids.

And so again, it's like You Tradition is overriding what is biblical, but now I need to go over. Well, no, no, no. I just want

Simone Collins: to dive into this a little bit more because what it [00:26:00] seems like the Bible really pushes for is self discipline, self discipline in your desires. and self discipline in your action.

So it's not the actual absence of having sex that matters. And it's not, it's not whether or not you're a virgin. It's, are you able to abstain? Are you able to prioritize God over your personal comfort? And, and of course it, it, chastity. Is supported when not being chased involves, for example breaking your marriage contract and cheating on your spouse.

That's not okay. That that's clear. And also lusting after someone else's life is bad, but that really has to do about with emotional control and doesn't have to do with what you're actually like, how slutty or not slutty you are. This is about, are you prioritizing God and are you in control? of your human functions.

And I think [00:27:00] for the same reason why gluttony is not okay, but eating is okay. It, this isn't, it's really about how you do it and it's about moderation. I just want to make that clear because when I, when I actually looked at what the Bible says, I was surprised by how little technical not having sex was emphasized.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so it is, it's like, and this is the thing that gets me, the cost of this. If it was just that they were exercising self discipline, instead of denying humans who otherwise would have been born the right to exist, I wouldn't care about it if they weren't convincing other people, especially when you consider that by 2060, 50 percent of the population is going to be infertile, especially when you consider that Catholics get married much later than other Christian denominations, which is the core reason why they're lower fertility than other, once they're married, they have kids at the same rate.

Sorry, we should note this. Catholics are way lower fertility than other Christian groups. You can see our video on this. So I'm like genuinely afraid for like Catholic survival in one sentence. And then in another sense because I'm [00:28:00] looking at this from a different moral framework, you know, the Bible instead of like the, all of this tradition and everything, obviously I'm going to see things a little differently but to me it looks like, you know, child sacrifice.

Um, But I want to go further here to talk about what progressives thinks and just how, how crazy it is. If you look at the way that progressives are being coached to talk about fetuses they will do things like be coached to talk about, Cardiac activity instead of a heartbeat. Yeah, or what did they

Simone Collins: say, cluster of cells?

Is that how they put it? Put it I'm trying to remember

Malcolm Collins: cardiac tissue begins to pulse, you know Um, this happens five to six weeks,

And oh, it makes me weep. And sometimes I do have doubts and oh, it makes me weep. I hope and pray to God it don't feed us as a song. Cause I want it to feel pain when I eject it from my own world.

Malcolm Collins: but I want to go over the timeline of a pregnancy We can sort of come to a [00:29:00] when does it seem like there is enough neural tissue there for insolvent to happen? Yeah. And I like your idea of the shadow cast, when is a shadow beginning to be cast by this thing that will eventually become a person?

Okay. And again, I don't think that non neural tissue casts a shadow in humans. And so I think that you're, you're going to have to, my finger does not cast a shadow that a soul could inhabit, like from my body.

Simone Collins: So let's go over the timing. And I want to, I want to start with something that's really important that kind of threw me for a loop when I first.

Started having pregnancies. Pregnancy weeks are not intuitive. Okay. Pregnancy weeks, like I'm 20 weeks pregnant. I am five weeks pregnant is conception minus two weeks. Pregnancy week starts with the female cycle starting. So when I start, my period is when day one of the pregnancy, 40 weeks period starts.

Did you know that Malcolm? I didn't know that. Yeah. So now, you know, basically, If we're talking the Catholic concept, a woman who is two weeks [00:30:00] pregnant actually isn't pregnant because no conception has happened. You know, she's in the process of preparing to ovulate. So also keep in mind that implantation after conception.

So, you know, once, once the egg and sperm are fertilized which typically occurs about two weeks after your last period begins. Implantation into the uterine lining. Doesn't happen for another eight or nine days. And I know this all too well from IVF. I've had a cycle where, you know, things didn't go quite well.

And I, I lost our embryo. Implantation doesn't always go well. It is not a guarantee that after there is conception and you have a fertilized embryo that has made it to day five, that is, that is going all right, is going to implant properly and continue to start growing. So like you say that, you know, the body is many ways of being like, Oh, working out.

Malcolm Collins: Go ahead. Do you want me to go into like the timeline? Sure. So if you go to around three to four weeks, that's when the neural tube begins to form. Now, it's very important, and people can [00:31:00] misunderstand this if they haven't studied developmental biology, is the neural tube is not made of neural tissue.

It is not neurons. It is just a tissue. Tube of cells that eventually turns into all of the stuff that is a neuron and a brain and everything like that. But it is not, there's, there's not like action potentials and stuff like that in the neural tube. By week six or seven, the first neurons begin to form and a basic brain structure begins to develop.

So this is when I think six and seven, like if you are at the Absolute earliest of when installment could happen. That's, I think the absolute earliest with seven weeks,

Simone Collins: which would be, which would be five weeks. So a month and one week after the, the, the sex act will have happened, which is just from a logistical standpoint.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. No, no, no, no, no. This isn't looking at the weeks of pregnancy. This is looking at like weeks of gestation.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. The weeks that I'm looking at. [00:32:00] are based on pregnancy weeks, because that is how all of these things work. And seven weeks is, is when? Yeah. Based on, on seven weeks of pregnancy is when the pain receptor start to form is when the nervous system starts to form.

Malcolm Collins: So, well, well, so that's when the, the pain receptor start to form. But you don't have brainwaves yet, which is important. Yes. You don't have brainwaves yet. Yes. So it's, it's,

Simone Collins: it's at both, it it, although it eight weeks fetuses can move in response to stimuli, that's when things get even more. Like things start to snowball.

Malcolm Collins: 10 weeks is when you get brainwaves and they can move in response to stimuli. I think for me, this is what I'd say. You likely have a human being there.

Simone Collins: Well, I would say

Malcolm Collins: even more shadowy human being it's, it would be like a not fully binding soul yet from my perspective.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's, but we're getting, 12 weeks, the nerves linking pain receptors to the thalamus and sub particle plates start forming and.

That's when researchers really start to argue that fetuses can feel pain. And

Malcolm Collins: when I think they obviously can't, cause there's been [00:33:00] things where people have done like videos of like abortions and you can see like the fetus screaming. Oh, don't,

Simone Collins: don't tell me. Don't.

Malcolm Collins: So they, they, now I'm going to cry all night.

Jesus. If you're, if you're going in these later stage. So I think you didn't

Simone Collins: give me a trigger warning.

Malcolm Collins: I should have known.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: should

Simone Collins: have

Malcolm Collins: known

Simone Collins: we're talking

Malcolm Collins: about this. The, the 12 week mark I, I think is where It really, I don't understand how you can go past that.

Simone Collins: Well, and here's the thing that really gets me is that at 15 weeks, if for example, that you have some really rare condition and some kind of procedure needs to be done on your fetus, that at that point they start using pain medication on your fetus to save it.

But like when they're doing the thing, they It is now standard medical practice after 15 weeks to use anesthesia during fetal surgeries. Now let's talk about, but this is really important. And this is going to come up a little bit later in my thoughts on this subject. Pain medication is not standard practice in [00:34:00] abortions.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that's wild practice when they're trying to save the, when they're trying to

Simone Collins: save it, it's standard practice after, after 15 weeks, of course, use anesthesia. Abortions that a doctor may at their discretion, but there is no standard practice because it's, that's, what's so interesting to this about me is there's this one part of the medical establishment that is like, okay, this is a baby, we're going to save your baby.

Don't worry, mother, it's going to be fine. And then there's this totally sort of other industry, which is like, this is a cluster of tissue. There is, there is, there's cardiac activity. Let's, you know, you need to exercise your right. This is not human. And I think, you know, when we're talking about something that is capable of feeling pain, that is recoiling in response to stimuli, to sharp stimuli or cuts, this is, and I'm just going to get into it.

So, I think that at some points, abortions are appropriate. But I also [00:35:00] think that throughout any point in someone's life, euthanasia is sometimes appropriate. And that is when you have, you know, a life threatening, you have days to live and you either get to choose between, you know, 3 weeks, 5 days, whatever of intense suffering and pain, or you can, you know, You know, choose to terminate your life or if someone doesn't have agency out of love for them, terminate their life in as, as, as kind and painless as a fashion possible.

And so I think that that's really the discussion that should be had in the instance of abortions is that when, when a, a, a child is not viable. And is going to die in intense pain. You need to take the same approach that you would take with any human in palliative care.

Malcolm Collins: I'd actually like you to push this when you, when you're in office, I think a bill that one rolls back how, how late abortion is happening in Pennsylvania.

But two mandates that when it does happen after a certain date that they use [00:36:00] anesthetics. So in Utah, it forces them to consider like, you know,

Simone Collins: but in Utah and some other States and of course Utah, because they get it. They love their kids. They, they do have some Rules about using anesthesia that like require you to use anesthesia for, for abortions, but this is not universal.

And so there are some legal requirements on this front. But it is, it is not let's see in Utah, I'm trying to, Oh no. I don't have how many weeks it is in Utah, but I think it might even be 20 weeks. I think it might be after 20 weeks in Utah. And what I would say is after 12 weeks, period, you're using any meds on this.

Yeah, and

Malcolm Collins: if Republicans here are like, Oh, you guys are being rhinos about this stuff. If you look at Republicans by Pew data, who are under the age of 30, like the next generation of Republicans are around 47%, so around half believe in abortions under any circumstance. The, the standard Republican establishment in the United States has screwed up the United [00:37:00] States abortion practice to the extent.

So let me explain what I mean by that. In Pennsylvania right now, it's legal to get abortions up to 24 weeks. This is true in most U. S. states. Now people don't understand. Yeah. And I think in

Simone Collins: Pennsylvania, it's 23, isn't it?

Malcolm Collins: It's 24. It's 24.

Nope.

Simone was right as always eight is 23 and a few days.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so hold on. Hold on. Now, what's really important here, right, is, is a lot of people were like, we're okay with like the European model of 12 weeks, right?

Like that's what it is. And most, I think it's

Simone Collins: 15 and 12

Malcolm Collins: to 15, 15 weeks. So people are like, why do you guys keep pointing out that it's 15 weeks in Europe? And the reason why we keep pointing that out. Is America is a more conservative country than Europe? Yes. Hold on. So why is it true that in America we have much looser [00:38:00] abortion policy than they have in Europe?

The answer is the life begins at conception crowd. Did that pick up on the mic? No.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the answer is, the reason why we have such a late and horrific abortion policy in the U. S. is the life begins at conception crowd. They absolutely screwed up this fight and kept us from winning and passing sane legislation around abortion.

Because, you know, They always were like, well, I won't vote for this. I won't vote for them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So there can be no reasonable compromise, no reasonable legislation because it's so polarized now.

Malcolm Collins: They, they have, and, and they have created this mindset where people don't even engage with what's really happening.

Even young Republicans don't really engage what's really happening. If you look at our views on abortion, this, we should move it back to this 12 week mark. This view on abortion. Is far to the [00:39:00] right of the average Republican voter in America, right? Yeah,

Simone Collins: well, and I also, here's another thing that I really want to emphasize 12 weeks is three months is a summer vacation in the United States, three months.

Think about. Think about how much can happen in three months. You can do a world tour in three months. You can do a European tour in three months. You can, you can grow a beard in three months. You can, you know, significantly adjust to life trauma in three months. That is enough time. If you just decide you don't want a baby.

To, you know, take care of it in three months. I mean, honestly, you know, after you have had, had sex with someone you can immediately take a morning after pill, assuming that you're in a state where that's, where that's legal.

And if you're you think we're being anti-Catholic or something and saying that the morning after pill should be legal? Consider that in the United States, non-religious. Early affiliated individuals who have never been married. , 35% have used the morning after pill. Among Catholics. That's [00:40:00] 32%. That's much higher than groups like evangelical Protestants where it's only 28% and they don't even have a religious objection to that. Or you can say, well, okay, that's just the non-super religious Catholics, right?

The very religious Catholics, the number must be significantly different. Well, unfortunately, , If you go to the ones who go to church once a month, it's 36%. One to three times a month. It's 33%.

And then weekly it's 25%. So it's still a quarter of Catholics who go to church every week have used the morning after pill. And if you're you're like, well, then this just proves, we need to remove the temptation to sin. Except then you would go, you don't get much more Catholic than the first council of Nicea. And at the first council of Nicea, it was decided it was so sinful to remove the temptation of sin from an individual that those individuals weren't allowed in [00:41:00] the priesthood, specifically, individuals who had castrated themselves to make it easier to not be tempted by sexual sin were forcibly removed from the priesthood.

Sin exists to fortify your spirit through resisting If God didn't want the devil to tempt you. If God didn't want the devil to be doing what he's doing, he could snap his fingers and the devil would disappear.

Simone Collins: Then I think, you know, things like this should be legal. I mean, we, we don't want to get to a point.

Where, you know, this is a problem in the first place where people are destroying life and it gets worse. You know, this is one of those things where like it starts off like the morality of it gets worse and worse the longer you wait. And I think it would be so great if we just moved the timeline up a little bit so that the damage that people and people took it seriously instead of just waiting and waiting and waiting.

Malcolm Collins: But hold on, we need to keep going here, because I want to, with this 24 week in mind, so you guys understand why this is worth fighting for, because I think a lot of people, [00:42:00] they either get this idiotic life begins at conception perspective, which is anti biblical, it's pagan, okay, it is not what the great Catholic thinkers thought, it is a modern mindset, and people are like, oh, Protestants, Protestants did not think this is and

Simone Collins: ultimately leads to more abortions to the point.

You just made more abortions are taking place because you're holding this view in

Malcolm Collins: the 1970s, more Republicans than Democrats were pro abortion, but they wanted more strict access to abortion. And this whole thing fell apart when we entered this recreational abortion era, and this worshiping of abortion that we now get was Democrats because of this open mindset.

But what I want to go into now. Is what is actually happening. So we got to the 12 week mark where we're like, okay, I can no longer justify, you know, what is happening from there to the 24 week mark.

Simone Collins: Okay. Trigger warnings for your wife. Who cries all night thinking about

Malcolm Collins: The cerebral cortex starts to form layers. Auditory development begins, and the fetus may start to hear sounds. And then by week 20, the thalamus [00:43:00] and cortex begin to form connections, which is considered crucial for consciousness.

So they're almost certainly conscious at this point. 23 to 24 And consciousness

Simone Collins: is one of those things that also makes us human. So if we're talking about, well, I'm okay with killing animals, I eat meat, I eat fish. Why would I not be okay with killing, you know, a human, the thing that makes a thing that isn't quite human, a thing that makes us human is consciousness.

So I think to that point, it's getting worse.

Malcolm Collins: 23 to 26, rapid brain growth occurs. Some studies suggest that rudimentary forms of consciousness might begin to emerge around this time. And so that's the stage that right now they're like, okay, yeah, we can go a little bit past that. And that is, and, and, and by the way, before that stage, you know, you were giving me the studies on things like being able to react when the mother is eating certain types of food.

Yeah, they

Simone Collins: make yucky faces when. Mothers are fed bitter foods, even when the mother cannot taste them. That's what's so cool [00:44:00] about these is that it, for the, for the research, they, they put a tube down the mother's throat. So the mother's not tasting the food. They're not reacting to like stress hormones in the mother's body.

They're literally reacting to the food that they're getting through their through the placenta.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And here I'd note all of this in the context, when p