A continual criticism of the pro-life movement is that adherents only care about children before they are born. But is that true? The proliferation of Pregnancy Help Centers throughout the country and the many outreach efforts of the pro-life movement to help women and babies after birth testifies to the lie of the accusation. Wesley’s guest today has been immersed in these efforts for decades. Peggy Hartshorn Ph.D. and her husband first volunteered to house pregnant girls in their home in 1975. She is now the Chair of Heartbeat International, an international nonprofit Christian organization with a worldwide network of more than 3,000 pro-life pregnancy help centers that provide comprehensive help to women throughout their pregnancies and after the child is born. The goal of Heartbeat International is to offer compassionate support so that no woman ever feels that abortion is her only option. Dr. Hartshorn has traveled to 52 countries in support of pregnancy help organizations in Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. She is the recipient of many awards for pro-life work, including: the President’s Volunteer Service Award under President George H.W. Bush, the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award, the Defender of Life Award from Students for Life, the Cardinal John J. O’Connor pro-life award from Legatus International, Dr. Hartshorn co-founded Heartbeat International’s Option Line in 2002. It is the only 24/7, bilingual, internet-based, pro-life call center in the world. Option Line handles about a quarter of a million calls for help each year, connecting callers to their community-based pregnancy help center. Dr. Hartshorn is also the co-author of The Power of Pregnancy Help: The First Fifty Years. Program Notes: Home (heartbeatinternational.org) What is a Pregnancy Center? (heartbeatinternational.org) Abortion Pill Reversal – Home Mothers share how crisis pregnancy centers helped them walk away from abortion: ‘huge enlightenment’ | Fox News More than 100 pro-life orgs, churches attacked since Dobbs leak | Fox News
In this episode of the Humanize podcast we will explore the human body. Is your body “engineered” or did it evolve through impersonal and random processes over countless millions of years of natural selection? And what difference does the answer to that question make? Wesley’s guests are the authors of Your Designed Body, a new book that explores the complexity of the human physical form, not just from a biological, but also, intriguingly, an engineering perspective. As the famous atheist proselytizer and biologist Richard Dawkins has written, “However many ways there may be to be alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead…” In other words, as the authors note, “Life’s margin of error is small,” and requires an intricate, complex and integrated systems to maintain life. These could not have arisen by mere chance, no matter the time must have been engineered to accomplish such myriad and sophisticated tasks. Whatever your views on how life came to be—whether by creation, intelligent design, or via random evolutionary forces—this is a fascinating and provocative conversation you will not want to miss. Steve Laufmann is a public speaker, author, computer scientist, and engineering consultant in the design of enterprise-class systems, with expertise in the difficulties of changing complex systems to perform new tasks. He was a founding member of the International Foundation for Cooperative Information Systems (IFCIS), and has published many juried papers and book chapters on information commerce and related topics. Several years ago, he began to apply his expertise to the study of living systems. He leads the Engineering Research Group at the Discovery Institute. Dr. Howard Glicksman is a primary care and hospice physician with more than forty years of practice in clinical and hospital settings. He is the author of The Designed Body series for Evolution News and Science Today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=9IGG7KmCk48&feature=emb_logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=YrH50hWwQko&feature=emb_logo Return of the God Hypothesis | Stephen C. Meyer (stephencmeyer.org)
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history. Which seems odd. Usually, a universal external threat unites societies and rallies populations to focus on the common foe. Instead, American society fractured into different tribes, which often coincided with our preexisting political factionalism. Adding to our woes, the proper approach to scientific inquiry and policy makers’ relationship with the expert class became badly skewed. Once an orthodoxy was declared by the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control, government leaders, the mainstream media, and Big Tech circled the wagons to prevent dissenting views from being aired—and even seeking to punish those with differing opinions. And we now know that action was taken to suppress heterodox voices. Wesley’s guest is one of those caught in this cultural oppression. Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, making his second Humanize appearance, is a Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic. He has published more than 100 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health among other fields. He holds an MD and PhD in economics, both earned at Stanford University. Bhattacharya is also a co-author The Great Barrington Declaration, published in the fall of 2020 to great controversy, which dissented against the reigning public health “lock down” policies being brought to bear against the virus, and offered a different approach that would reopen society as we continued to protect our most vulnerable members from illness. As a consequence of his heterodox advocacy, Bhattacharya was censored on social media and suffered professional ostracism at Stanford University. Link: https://mobile.twitter.com/drjbhattacharya https://www.ntd.com/multiple-scientists-join-lawsuit-against-biden-administrations-alleged-social-media-censorship-on-covid-19_820957.html https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twitter-blacklisting-of-jay-bhattacharya-medical-expert-covid-lockdown-stanford-doctor-shadow-banned-censorship-11670621083 https://humanize.today/podcast/dr-jay-bhattacharya-on-covid-19-authentic-public-health-and-the-biosecurity-state/
In the current episode of Humanize, Wesley interviews Chen Guangcheng, an authentic human rights hero and adamant opponent of Chinese Communist Party tyranny that rules the People’s Republic of China. Known internationally as “the barefoot lawyer,” Chen is a renowned human rights activist who fearlessly advocated for the welfare and rights of women, the disabled, and the poor while in China, and whom today, continues to carry the banner of human freedom in opposition to Chinese totalitarianism from the United States. Chen’s ardent and courageous human rights advocacy has received extensive international acclaim and has drawn heightened international attention to the maltreatment of women and abuses of China’s domestic policies, including forced abortions and sterilizations. Blind from an early age and self-taught in the law, in 2005, Chen gained international recognition for organizing a landmark class-action lawsuit against authorities in Shandong province, for the excessive enforcement of the one-child policy. As a result of this lawsuit challenging the authorities, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months in prison. He was released from prison in 2010, but remained under house arrest or “soft detention” at his home in Dongshigu Village. In April 2012, Chen escaped his house arrest and fled to the US Embassy. In May 2012, Chen, his wife, and his two children were granted U.S. visas and departed Beijing for New York City. He has lived in the United States ever since and became an American citizen last summer. Among many other international acclaims, in 2006 Chen was named to the Time 100, which lists the most influential people in the world. He is a 2007 laureate of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which is often called the Nobel Peace Prize of Asia. Currently, he is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America, where he is also on the faculty. He is the author of The Barefoot Lawyer: A Blind Man’s Fight for Justice and Freedom in China. Special thanks to William Saunders, Director of the Center for Human Rights, for helping with language issues during this interview. https://ihe.catholic.edu/guangcheng-chen/ https://smile.amazon.com/Barefoot-Lawyer-Blind-Justice-Freedom-ebook/dp/B00C74Z2QY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GARGIWYDKNNW&keywords=the+barefoot+lawyer&qid=1669736998&sprefix=the+barefoot+lawyer%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-chinese-communist-party-is-destroying -my-village-corruption-meng-river-dam-shandong-province-dissent-dongshigu-11657743678 https://arts-sciences.catholic.edu/academics/interdisciplinary/human-rights-center/barefoot-lawyer/index.html https://www.wsj.com/articles/stability-maintenance-means-repressing-the-chinese-peoples-spirit-ccp-china-xi-jinping-beijing-dictator-freedom-11669414014 https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/02/80466/ https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/02/80470/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8LgNND6CzfDiMYwDujDS5Q https://open.spotify.com/show/67FdLQPM9FzA2cIO5pdYrx https://www.facebook.com/Barefootlawyerreports
In a previous episode of Humanize, Wesley interviewed Jennifer Lahl, director of The Detransition Diaries, which documents the stories of three young women who received what is called “gender-affirming care”—including a mastectomy in one case—and later realized that they were indeed the female sex they were born. That discussion focused mostly on the radical body-altering interventions that children who question their sex too often receive. In this follow-up interview, we take a broader look at “Gender ideology” generally, and how the West got caught up in a moral panic that has seen an explosion of both adult and child cases of gender dysphoria. The discussion ranges from describing the supposed “Seven Sexes” that gender ideologues argue exist, to the role of social media in this social contagion, to how the ideology represents the hegemony of feelings over facts, and the reasons children are the prime targets of gender warriors. It is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Jay Wesley Richards, Ph.D., is an analytic philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Religious Liberty and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and Executive Editor of The Stream. Jay is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. He is also creator and executive producer of several documentaries, including three that have appeared widely on PBS. Jay’s articles and essays have been published in The Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Washington Post, The New York Post, Newsweek, Forbes, Fox News, National Review Online, The Hill, Investor’s Business Daily, Washington Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Huffington Post, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and many other publications. Jay has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, including CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox and Friends, PBS, CBN, TBN, and is a regular guest onEWTN. An experienced public speaker, he has spoken at academic conferences; college and university campuses in the United States, Europe, and Asia; many think tanks in the U.S. and Europe; public policy meetings; and on several occasions to members of the U.S. Congress and U.S. congressional staff. https://www.heritage.org/education/commentary/the-battle-over-parents-rights-education-just-getting-started https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/california-attacks-parents-rights-under-the-guise-medical-care https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/did-american-academy-pediatrics-just-blink-gender-affirming-care-or-bluff
We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only a decade ago, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” is becoming a flood. It is one thing when adults decide to radically alter their bodies. But it is quite another to promote these radical “gender-affirming care” in children. And yet, the American medical establishment and the Biden administration state that the science in this regard is “settled” and that immediate affirmation is the only humane approach to treating children with gender dysphoria, interventions that can include puberty blocking, cross hormone therapy, and serious surgeries such as mastectomies. But is it settled science? Recently, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Finland have hit the brakes on immediate gender affirmation in children—to the point that the UK closed down its largest gender clinic as unsafe for patients. The NHS also concluded that instead of encouraging transition in minors, medics should take “a watchful approach” and that doctors have “to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role.” Such returns are known as “de-transitioning,” a phenomenon that receives far too little attention in the United States. But Wesley’s guest in this episode of Humanize is doing something about that. Jennifer Lahl directed, wrote, and co-produced an important documentary, The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters. Catherine Saxbe, who is board certified in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, wrote of the film: “In The Detransition Diaries, We follow several women unmasking a medical system that failed to treat the significant mental health problems which led them to seek radical gender transformation via hormones and amputations, but did not provide the happiness and self-acceptance they sought and were sold.” Lahl founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Her writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. https://cbc-network.org/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiBR4XvsCicbopYFciVxGrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhUoiXGWx8 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hundreds-of-teen-gender-affirming-mastectomies-each-year/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/seattle-childrens-hospital-performs-some-gender-affirming-surgeries-on-children-under-18/
Racism is profoundly evil and a clear violation of human exceptionalism by treating inherent equals unequally. Indeed, if we are to become a truly just society, racism must be countered by people of good will whenever it is expressed. At the same time, slavery is long gone and Jim Crow is dead, never to be mourned. So, the question must be asked: Has the United States finally attained the ideal of becoming a substantially equal society, in which people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, or do we remain—as some insist—a systemically racist culture threatened by white supremacy? To be sure, Martin Luther King’s ideal has not yet been fully achieved. But the white nationalism accusation seems calculatedly overblown and may be a cover for imposing new policies that, if implemented, would divide us more profoundly over race than we have been for decades. These are fundamental questions. Equality is such an important goal that Wesley wanted to interview someone who has spent decades focusing on how to best promote a truly equal society for everyone, regardless of race. Humanize is honored that Ward Connerly has agreed to share his views on racism, individual rights, the question of affirmative action, and how best to achieve the ideals of the American experiment. Wardell Anthony “Ward” Connerly is a nationally renowned American political activist, social commentator, and businessman. He served as a University of California Regent between 1993-2005. He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a national non-profit organization in opposition to racial and gender preferences, and is the president of Californians for Equal Rights, a non-profit organization active in the state of California with a similar mission. In 1995, Connerly led the drive to get Proposition 209 on the ballot prohibiting race- and gender-based preferences in state hiring, contracting and state university admission. It passed with 54.6% of the vote.In 1997, Connerly supported a similar ballot measure in Washington state, Initiative 200, which would later pass with 58.2% of the vote. For the 2020 election, Connerly organized the coalition opposing Proposition 16, which would have removed the sections added to the California constitution after Proposition 209 was approved by the voters. In the end, 57% of the votes cast in the election opposed Proposition 16. Proposition 209 remains the law of the State of California. Connerly is also the author of Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences and Lessons from My Uncle James: Beyond Skin Color to the Content of Our Character America Isn’t a Racist Country – WSJ https://www.theepochtimes.com/its-time-to-end-affirmative-action_4431148.html 1996 California Proposition 209 – Wikipedia OPRF to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year | West Cook News
In this episode of Humanize, Wesley focuses on the emerging computer technology known as artificial intelligence. Are we on the verge of the era of machines? Is AI destined to supplant most human endeavors and activities? Can a computer be deemed a “person” and should it be granted rights as part of the moral community. Will we ever attain immortality by uploading our minds into computers as transhumanists predict? And what the heck is AI anyway? Wesley’s guest, Dr. Robert J Marks II has the answers. An Electrical Engineer, Marks is the Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Dept. of Engineering and Computer Science at Baylor University. He has worked in the field of artificial intelligence for more than three decades. His research supporters include NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Lab, and the Office of Naval Research. He has consulted for Microsoft, and Boeing, and has authored several books and hundreds of peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. He is a fellow of the Optical Society and a Life Fellow of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is also the Director of the Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. His most recent book isNon-Computable You: What You Can Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will. Robert J. Marks II | Discovery Institute Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will: Marks II, Robert J.: 9781637120156: Amazon.com: Books The Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence | Discovery Institute (centerforintelligence.org) www.mindmatters.ai Artificial Intelligence Programs Aren’t Human: Five Reasons Why | National Review
The Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa, Florida
With Western society becoming morally polyglot and secular, religious freedom is becoming a major political clash point, and in the United States, a central front in what is sometimes called the culture war. Proponents of robust religious freedom protections see the “free exercise” of religion guaranteed in the Constitution as the “First Liberty.” But others view the same issue as an excuse to justify discrimination against the LGBT community and to thwart the free exercise of unfettered reproductive freedom. This controversy is so important to both our rights and duties as human beings that Wesley invited Sam Brownback—one of the world’s most engaged defenders of religious freedom–back for a return visit to Humanize to discuss the current scene. In the premier episode of this Podcast, Brownback discussed religious freedom internationally. Ambassador Sam Brownback on Human Rights and Religious Freedom | Humanize In this episode, he and Wesley take a deep dive into domestic religious freedom controversies. Sam Brownback served as the United States Ambassador at Large for international Religious Freedom from February, 2018 until January, 2021. Prior to that, he was elected governor of Kansas, an office he held from 2011 to 2018. He has also represented Kansas in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives. While a member of the Senate, he worked actively on religious freedom issues in multiple countries and was a key sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Brownback is also a founder and Chairman of the newly formed National Committee for Religious Freedom. NCRF (thencrf.org) ChasedAway — NCRF (thencrf.org) Opinion | Extreme Religious Liberty Is Undermining Public Health – The New York Times (nytimes.com) State Abortion Bans Face Religious-Liberty Lawsuits From the Left – WSJ NCRF Eight Guiding Principles on Religious Freedom: Religious freedom was guaranteed by our Founders in the First Amendment because they believed religion important for America – for the flourishing of citizens and the flourishing of our Republic. Religion is the universal human search for a greater-than-human source of being, reality, and ultimate meaning. To deny the right to engage in this search, or to live in accord with the truths discovered, is to deny the core of what it means to be human. In America, religious freedom encompasses the right to believe, or not to believe, in religious truths. For those who believe, the First Amendment guarantees them the right of religious free exercise, that is, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs. All Americans are equally entitled to this right. The fundamental purpose of the ban on the establishment of religion is to encourage free exercise by limiting government power over religion. Religious free exercise entails the rights of conscience. No man or woman may be coerced by the state or any other human agent to believe or to act in ways contrary to his or her religious conscience. All American religious communities are equally entitled to the right of free exercise. Historically, the right of free exercise has entailed exemptions from laws in order to avoid undue burdens on religious conscience and practice. Protecting these exemptions is vitally important and must continue. But exemptions alone do not capture the full meaning of free exercise. Religious free exercise entails private rights, such as worship and internal governance. It also entails public rights, including: The rights of parents to raise their children consistent with the moral values taught by their religious traditions and to participate actively in the education of their children; The rights of students to express their religious and moral beliefs in public schools on a basis equal to the rights of expression by all students; The rights of business owners to operate their businesses in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs and the rights of employees to manifest their religious beliefs in their places of work on a basis equal to the rights of expression of other employees; The rights of medical professionals, clinics and hospitals, to apply religiously-informed standards in their care for patients, including in their professional judgments on how to protect human life, heal the body, strengthen mental health, and avoid harm to human dignity and flourishing; The rights of religion-based charitable and non-profit institutions to operate in a manner consistent with their religious convictions, including the right to hire those who accept those convictions and fire those who reject them.
In episode one of the second season of Humanize, Wesley J. Smith’s guest is the internationally famous novelist Dean Koontz. Dean and Wesley discuss how he came to be an author, how life is filled with meaning, his art, the importance of human exceptionalism, the problem with transhumanism, and how Dean uses humor to further his plots and character development. Dean recalls his upbringing in an impoverished household that did not have running water until he was 11, how a high school English teacher changed his life, and his love for the use of the English language. He and Wesley also discuss the beauty of the human/dog relationship and his philanthropic support for Canine Companions for Independence, a school that trains service dogs to help people with disabilities lead independent lives. Any reader of Dean Koontz and supporter of human exceptionalism will want to listen to this fascinating interview with one of America’s most successful and prolific authors. Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania and graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University). When he was a senior in college, he won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since. Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list, making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone. His books are published in 38 languages and he has sold over 500 million copies to date. Dean is also a committed philanthropist a famous lover of dogs, and as the interview amply illustrates, a deep thinker with a big and tender heart. Related Dean Koontz – International Bestselling Master of Suspense Home – Canine Companions Amazon.com: The Big Dark Sky: 9781542019927: Koontz, Dean: Books Dean Koontz Essays | ipl.org St. Odd?: The Catholics Who Love Dean Koontz (catholiceducation.org)
