Making of 800,000 Murderers: My Interview with Anti-Choice Activist Joel Kurtinitis
By: Natalie Harwood
Tags: Abortion, Abortion Rights, Religious Extremism, Pro Choice, Pro Life

Making of 800,000 Murders: My Interview with Anti-Choice Activist Joel Kurtinitis

Joel Kurtinitis is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Gannett Media outlets The Des Moines Register and U.S.A. Today, as well as conservative media outlets such as the The Federalist and The Blaze.

While Mr. Kurtinitis’ educational background is in journalism and professional background is in insurance, as an editorialist he often writes about reproductive rights. His work includes pieces such as the tortured abortion metaphor, Could Alexander Hamilton’s Story Still Happen Today? and Squishy Republicans Insert Fatal Flaw Into Heartbeat Bill in which he argues Iowa’s recent “Heartbeat” legislation is not extreme enough.

I reached out reached out to Mr. Kurtinitis for an interview in an attempt to clarify his positions on abortion rights as they relate to the legal system. My interview was conducted via Skype on August 29th, 2019. The transcript of the interview is as follows:

Natalie: First of all, I feel like we have a ton in common. We are both parents, we are both religious, and we share some similar views related to immigration. That seems like a good thing to establish.

Joel: That’s a great place to start.

Natalie: Ok, I talked to Evan [note: a friend of mine interviewed Joel for a podcast previously] about when the two of you talked, and I wanted to go a little bit further. There are some questions I have always wanted the answer to. I don’t really get a chance and I don’t really understand — there are so many questions I have never gotten to ask a pro-life activist and I would like to get a chance to ask.

Joel: Sure.

Me: So I would like to talk about your vison. How your personal beliefs would translate into public policy. For example, how does Personhood actually translate into the real world, and apply to my life and my sisters’ lives. There is an enormous amount of externalities that I have not see a pro-life person address. I’ve never have had a pro-life person acknowledge that Personhood would be a dramatic restructuring of the legal framework of this country. Which is absolutely your prerogative to advocate for but I really want a better picture of what that reality looks like to you. I can tell that you have done quite a bit of research into what the legal system as to what the legal perspective looks like. I went and read a lot of your editorials and I know, for instance, your editorial about rape and incest exceptions is a pretty internally consistent one and does answer a question I had. So I want to dive in to if you were to win in full, what would the world look like and what is your dream.

Joel: Can you tell me which article that was because I have written a few of them and I want to be sure we are on the same page and I know what you are referencing?

Me: Oh, I don’t remember. I went through all your archived ones.

Joel: Thank you for doing the research.

Me: I think it was a Register one. I read a Federalist one and there was a weird paywall on the Blaze, so I assume the Register.

Joel: The Blaze sort of went fruity on me.

Me: Oh, it was “Republicans are squishy on abortion”.

Joel: Ok, I know which one you are talking about.

Natalie: I want to establish that these discussions are able to turn into an abstract, circular, philosophical arguments, which I am not very interested in having.

Joel: Sure.

Natalie: What I want to — I just don’t think it is very useful. I want to lay out how your views impact peoples’ actual lives in the real world. I want to talk about what that looks like to you. We clearly both have some sincerely held fundamental beliefs based in our backgrounds and religions and family, and those are just never going to match up. They are just not. I know that about you, you know that about me. But I want to talk about the impact on public policy and what your dream world looks like and how you answer some of the externalities that I see. An enormous [number of] problems that would come with that kind of public policy. What matters in discussions of politics, I think to me, is how it will shape the lives of those around you. What public policy is actually written, what the laws say and how is the law applied versus talking about our thoughts and feelings.

Joel: Sure.

Natalie: So that is my little — what I am getting at is I want to know specifically more about what a world in which you win everything and you have a Personhood amendment, do a “clean” life at conception bill, or whatever you call it. What is that going to look like and how is it going to answer some of the questions I have about problems that could come with that.

Joel: Hmm. So let me back up to just a couple of — just because I want to understand the premises. First of all, I would say that I don’t want any — and speaking as a libertarian especially — I don’t want my beliefs to become law just because I have strong beliefs because I don’t think that is a good basis for law. It’s not a good basis for public policy. Law and public policy need to be dictated by science, need to be dictated by — to some extent — public consent because the whole consent of the governed thing, right? So these are the principles — we can’t just have somebody who is preaching the earth is flat and put them up there and say that because they have a sincerely held belief that it is equally valid. I definitely don’t think that, I guess I’ll say I approach this topic as pretty much any other. I try to keep a very stark line between personal belief, things that I believe, and my worldview and things that are just objectively verifiable. So that’s just a little bit of background. And then the second component is just that this whole, I appreciate that you remarked on the internal consistency of. Which the whole thing is very much an “if, then” proposition. So if we can’t agree on the “if” then the “then” becomes very difficult to obtain. So that said, I just wanted to lay that out as the groundwork on this. Fire away. So you’re sort of just asking about if everything goes the way I would have it go and we get a life at conception act that is “clean”, what does that look like in the outworking of it.

Natalie: Yes, I have 19 questions about it.

Joel: Oh wow, that’s a lot.

*laughter*

Natalie: The way I am approaching this is that I am not trying to do an argument or debate, I just want to get your perspective. If you do want to interview me back, we can schedule that but I don’t anticipate — because I want to you to be able to freely answer them — but I don’t anticipate that that many questions is going to go as long as you might think.

Joel: Sure, yep that’s completely okay. Yeah, that completely alright. And just so you know I am recording on my end too, just for clarity and everything.

Natalie: Yeah, we talked about that.

Joel: Oh yeah, okay fire away.

Natalie: Ok, so I guess the place I am starting from is that Evan asked you about what the punishment should be or how the law should be applied if abortion is illegal. So I want to talk about your answer — your answer boiled down to the doctor gets a murder charge. But you didn’t have a solid answer about what should happen to the woman, which I think is really important. But you did say it could be a potential accessory to murder charge.

Joel: Mmhmm.

Natalie: I think that this is something that I have never gotten a good answer from a pro-life person. They are just not willing to take that extra step to what happens to the woman. However, I went and researched some of the different charges related to murder, and that would very explicitly fit under a conspiracy charge. So, if you go and talk to someone else and say “I need you to go kill x person and I will pay you to do so”, the person who shoots get a charge, but you get a bigger charge.

Joel: Mmhmm.

Natalie: So I’m wondering why you don’t think that women should get harsher charges when they are the conspirators and whether it is acceptable to you to provide a conspiracy to commit murder charge. Also because there is an conspiracy charge — so if two people sit down and talk together and say “we are going to do this crime” — so the existence of the conspiracy in the first place means you don’t need to prove who actually held the gun. So you would get as harsh, if not harsher, charges for a woman who requests someone else to commit a murder for her and then paying them, than someone who just went in and did it. So I am wondering if it is acceptable to you that the way the legal system is now, the punishment would be harsher to the woman.

Joel: Oh well, you convinced me.

Natalie: [inaudible]

Natalie: So you see kind of see the question I am asking, is it acceptable to you?

Joel: Yeah, I understand what you are saying. First of all I am not a lawyer -

Natalie: I am going to cut you off real quick. You do cite in a lot of your articles “this is not a consistent legal framework”. You are advocating for specific laws so while I do appreciate that it difficult without being a lawyer, advocating for public laws does need to know what the law is and how law works.

Joel: Oh, I know what the law is and I know how I want it to work. But laws and penalties are two different things. And criminal charges as opposed to the laws they violate are different things.

Natalie: Yes, but-

Joel: There are a lot of Iowa Code prohibitions that do not detail a specific penalty because they leave them up to the legal system.

Natalie: So what do you think the penalty should be?

Joel: So that is kind of spitballing, it is situational. So if you — that’s — if you’re treating it just consistently like you would with any other killing, then you would address the facts as they come, right? If your life is in danger, it is usually different, it is usually a different charge if you are defending yourself? If your life is in danger, or if you are in an unforeseen situation, if you feel threatened, those are taken into consideration. There’s a whole lot of things that need to be taken into consideration. It’s not just a one size fits all. You come and hear someone’s dead, you’re at the scene, we just throw the book at you? These are things where judgment and evidence is prevented, and different sides get to make the case. So why would that not be applied here?

Natalie: Ok, so that spins along really well to my next question. So, as a libertarian, I think that we are probably consistently on the same side in regards to mass incarceration. I want to give you some numbers. Currently, as they are — correct me — you agree about mass incarceration?

Joel: Yeah, I am completely against it.

Natalie: Perfect.

Joel: Completely against mass incarceration.

Natalie: So there are 2,298,300 prisoners currently. So we both hate that, perfect.

Joel: Yes

Natalie: So every single year there are 638,169 abortions. So that would be a 31% increase in the number of prisoners and caseloads. Where will you take the money from for that, do you raise taxes? How are you going to provide the necessary judges and living quarters and appeals processes and public defenders for a 31% increase in the number of prisoners in the United States? Let’s say that there are these externalities that reduce that by 10 percent. 10% of the people never get the murder charges, they have the other things you are saying as extenuating. Even a 21% increase in the number of prisoners in our prisons and cases for our public defenders and caseloads that need to come before a judge, where would you take the money for that, how does that reconcile with your libertarian beliefs, will that involve raising taxes or would you pull it from somewhere else?

Joel: None of the above. I think you are underestimating the power of laws as a deterrent. So these places now operate completely legally. By the way, many of these are funded by tax dollars. So first of all, if you cut the funding that we are giving Planned Parenthood and other organizations right now through Medicare and Medicaid, and until a few weeks ago, Title VIIII-

Natalie: Title X.

Joel: Title X, sorry. You already have money in that account, but you are talking about shutting down the availability, making it illegal, driving it underground. To assume that 600,000 people would line up to go to jail, I don’t think is realistic.

Natalie: Well, actually I looked up — in the year prior to the decision of Roe v. Wade, 829,000 illegal abortions occurred. So that’s actually a higher number than what we have had since. So I don’t really see any reason to believe the numbers would drop when we can just look at the pre-Roe time to give us an example of how many illegal abortions we’re actually looking it. So let’s say it is half that number. So even if you cut it in half, how do you deal with 410,000 new capital cases every year?

Joel: The numbers before Roe were actually debunked. One of the guys who put it together just spoke to me this week. It wasn’t Guttmacher, it was one of the guys who was involved with Roe and said they were artificially inflating those numbers and they were never that close. I can get you that link. I will look for it right now but I don’t know if I will be able to find it. But I would just challenge those numbers, I think they are far above what is realistic and I just don’t see it being enough to tax the system. I also think that you also have to have justiticial, right? You have to have evidences, you have to have witnesses, some way to actually show something actually happened, right? Just like we do now. So there is an enforcibility question for sure. But the enforcibility questions, the response to that is not “well we should just make it legal?”. It is not an either/or. I guess my main answer is that I would challenge your numbers, they are far too high. I think if you cut off the access, cut off the government subsidy, and you create an incentive for people not to do that. And not just a disincentive, right? I think not just myself but all the pro-lifers I know is that we do want more favorable options for those people. We want adoption to be easier. It should not cost you half of your life’s earnings to adopt a child. We want the foster care system be improved. We want more people to be encouraged to become parents, to take in children, all of these things we used to value as a society that we don’t and in part that is because it is so easy to obtain an abortion. So I think there are societal remedies to this too, and we can’t only focus on the prosecution access we would have too, because obviously if you only have that side of it, you only have half of the equation.

Natalie: Ok. So do you think that mifepristone should be illegal and if so how will doctors assist women who come in with partial miscarriages that would cause them to die without medical intervention?

Joel: Is that the morning after pill?

Natalie: No.

Natalie: That is one of two pills people use for a medication abortion, but the two pills are different and they have different regulations and different impacts to outlaw them. So do you think mifepristone should be illegal? I am not talking about an emergency contraceptive. That is levonorgestrel.

Joel: Uh, yeah. As far as the availability, I don’t know, I guess I would say if there are other medical effects of it outside of deliberately terminating a pregnancy, yeah it should be available outside of that. But in the event it is to be used to deliberately miscarry, then it is not different than an abortion any other way?

Natalie: How do you prove intent?

Joel: Well, how do you prove intent with anything else? You gather evidence and select people who can make that judgment.

Natalie: So, like calling in peoples’ relatives to testify in a murder trial that you said that you didn’t want to carry on with the pregnancy? Is that what you are envisioning?

Joel: Yeah. There is a potential for that kind of thing. That would probably pretty rare though. I think you can usually — in a lot of cases you know whether someone was aware they were pregnant. In our generation, just with social media, um, in a lot of cases could be used. So I think there is definitely the possibility of that. But if you can’t prove intent, you can’t prove intent? That’s true for every other murder. There’s a ton of murders that we can’t prove are murder and that’s why we go to a lesser charge like manslaughter. If you can’t prove intent, that is what you would resort to. We do the best we can with the justice system we have.

Natalie: So if we have someone who we don’t know if it was a miscarriage or an abortion, we should charge them with manslaughter?

Joel: Ehh, I don’t — no. There is no way to do that because we know that miscarriages happen naturally. So there is not room there for that. I do think that is sort of aside of the question of abortion. I always think it is a little dishonest to confuse abortion and miscarriage. My wife has written about this as well, it is kind of insulting to the people who miscarry.

Natalie: The thing is, I am very familiar with what I am talking about. I have worked in sexual health and OBGYN for the majority of my professional life, and therefore I am very clear on what the difference is — what a spontaneous abortion is. So I am using it colloquially. I would not necessarily use that if I were speaking to a layperson.

Joel: Ok.

Natalie: If that makes sense.

Joel: Yeah, I appreciate that.

Natalie: It is in no way trying to be insensitive. I do understand the different types of miscarriages. I am just assuming that we have expertise about what is a legal term. I do understand what a miscarriage is.

Joel: Just trying to avoid a bait and switch. I am not saying that is what you were trying to do, I am just saying I don’t want to go down that road for miscommunication.

Natalie: I do in fact know that miscarriages are medically called spontaneous abortions.

Joel: I have never, ever heard a pro-life person argue that miscarriages should be criminalized.

Natalie: The question is, to me, though, is how on earth would you tell the difference? If someone has taken a pill at home?

Joel: You can’t always tell the difference. That is kind of the whole point of what I am saying about our current justice system is it is not set up to be right 100% of the time. It is set-up to be right with the evidence available as many times as possible. If it is injustititual it is injustititual, there is nothing you can do. But an imperfect solution does not mean that you should leave a horrific problem.

Natalie: So do you think that misoprostol should be illegal — so that is the other form of medicine that someone uses in a chemical abortion, which you know is until around nine weeks, six days gestation. That is the second kind of medicine that is involved, but it would not be referred to as an abortifacient, it is something that is used to soften the cervix, so — are you familiar with how medication abortions works?

Joel: Um, I am familiar with a couple types — is this the one that stops implantation?

Natalie: No.

Joel: Or is this the one that is too late for that, where he goes in and basically chemically removes the fetus?

Natalie: So it is a two step process. If someone is early enough in gestation, they come in they give them a pill in the clinic to soften to cervix, then you have a second pill you take at home. You put it in your cheek, you have a day or two of cramping, a lot of bleeding. So that is what the process looks like. Then, about one to two weeks after that you would go back in and get additional testing to determine that the abortion has been carried out. So that is how that works. So I am asking about the two drugs that are involved in it, with the understanding that they both have a number of medical uses. Misoprostol is used in treatment for certain cancers. Mifepristone is used by veterinarians. So you’re saying that you don’t any kind of abortion pill should be illegal, it should just be illegal to take while intending to terminate the pregnancy?

Joel: You know that is the only way the justice system can work around it. You know as a libertarian I am also against the drug war for the same reason. You can only enforce certain aspects of what people can have access to, or you are just going to create a black market for what people are going to do anyway. So the best that we can do, then, is to allow them to be used in legitimate medical uses, and then where there is evidence that people have abused them, or used them to harm another person, just we do with anything else, that use then becomes criminal. So I mean, if you take a sleeping pill and you get it for a legitimate medical use, that’s totally cool. If you use it to roofie someone, that is illegal. I mean, we already do this with other drugs and medications.

Natalie: To piggyback off what you are saying — where you understand that in the drug war, prohibition doesn’t stop people using drugs. It just creates a black market, which you have just said. I have two questions regarding that black market. What should happen if people illegally possess mifepristone, is that a drug trafficking case? And if so do you support providing more funding to the DEA?

Joel: Well I was against prohibition of it, so I am not sure that is a logical follow-up-

Natalie: You are against prohibition of abortion?

Joel: I am against prohibition of the drugs. If there are legitimate medical uses for them, they should not be outlawed.

Natalie: So I am saying we are not outlawing them. We are having people who are selling them illegally. Someone gets a prescription, they come, they get a bunch of pills from Mexico and they come up and give it to people who are seeking help with unintended pregnancies. Is that considered drug trafficking and are you okay with the expansion of that DEA that would come with that?

Joel: I don’t know that that would be a drug related charge. I think that would be more along the lines of what we were talking about earlier, where there is conspiracy, there is accessory, I mean if you can show that harm actually came from that, that there was intent to harm, then you have a different set of criminal charges. I don’t see how that would be under any part of the DEA, which has been an utter failure. So if you actually want to pursue this on a practical level, I don’t think that is how you would do it.

Natalie: So what would you do to prevent trafficking of mifepristone?

Joel: I guess I am curious as to — I said that it should be legal, so I don’t understand why there would be trafficking.

Natalie: You can traffic in hydrocodone, and it is legal.

Joel: So an unregulated trade then.

Natalie: Yes. That is what drug trafficking is.

Joel: Well, I am against the drug war. This would be included in it. You are not going to stop people from getting that kind of thing if they want it.

Natalie: Ok, but, like if you had unregistered weapons and you sold one. That weapon was used in the murder. The person who sold you that illegal weapons would also get charges. So it doesn’t really seem consistent to me to not prosecute people who distribute pills for the purposes of abortion. And I just feel like there is a pretty enormous expansion of that power that would be involved with that.

Joel: I don’t -

Natalie: This is something I am 100% sure of because I have personally been involved in some of these meetings. There is a network people are attempting to build for a post-Roe world. Where they have vets and doctors and people from Mexico help distribute drugs in a way to be outside the system. So I don’t think you can say that this will not be a significant burden on the legal system because I know for an absolute fact that that is being built. So would you consider needing a new drug trafficking task force, or do you not have a problem with people building underground abortion drug trades? What are your thoughts?

Joel: You are just talking about one method. Like, the gun control debate? You are taking away one method but there are other methods available. So, you know, people can force an abortion, with you are well familiar with the Roe dialogue, with a coat hanger. You aren’t gonna ban coat hangers, right? You can’t stop an illegal coathanger trade. It is the same here. We do what we can. We insist on consequences when people take innocent life. And as we find more efficient ways to combat it, whether it be cultural or legal, we do that. If people are doing that — it is just kind of an appalling thing to say, that we are preparing an army of secret drug smugglers to make sure people can still abort their unwanted children- isn’t that kind of sickening?

Natalie: We have different opinions about that. You are absolutely welcome to interview me at another time. But I do know that there are organizations working on that because there are people who believe that it would be unsafe to not have some kind of network where people can actually access. And I don’t think it is entirely fair to say I am focusing on just one method and I should be focusing on a huge range of them, because I think a lot of time something that is lost is that 90% happen in the first trimester. Probably from my personal experience, 2/3 of those are abortion pills.

Joel: Mmhmm.

Natalie: So I think that is something that is important to address and I don’t feel you are doing that right now. The distribution of abortion pills would be the same as the distribution of AK-47s if we are calling that murder. Do you see what I am saying?

Joel: Yeah, but that is not how gun charges work either. Currently under gun laws I can sell any gun that I have to anyone that I want to with a bill of sale, and that is perfectly alright. If they go and kill ten people with that, it is not my responsibility.

Natalie: So you are fine with me selling abortion bills out of my house?

Joel: I mean, I would prefer you not.

Natalie: But you think that a woman who gets an abortion should be charged with murder but I should not?

Joel: I think you need to have a way to prove intent.

Natalie: My intent was that I have a pile of abortion pills in my house and I tell people to please come get an abortion if you need it. So should I be prosecuted and how are you going to afford that?

Joel: No, you have to show intent.

Natalie: What if I said I intend to sell these out of my house.

Joel: For abortions specifically? “If you need an abortion, you can come get an abortion pill and that will abort your baby”?

Natalie: Yes.

Joel: Then yes, you should get charged.

Natalie: Okay.

Joel: I don’t see there being a half million people in America doing this out of their garage, but I could be wrong.

Natalie: I think this is an important question, though.

Joel: Mmmhmm.

Natalie: Because this is so, so much more complicated than an editorial about a Personhood bill makes it seem, and-

Joel: It is no more complicated than our current justice system in matters of homicide. That is complicated too and we don’t drop it because it is complicated.

Natalie: I know and it also sucks.

Joel: Do you know anyone in favor of repealing murder laws?

Natalie: Okay.

Joel: If you are looking for my logic that’s where it comes from. When you are asking me about whether the implementation of this is feasible, I would say you look at our current system, there are things that seem unfeasible. But because of moral considerations we allow it to persist. We try to sustain it as best we can, because otherwise is barbarism.

Natalie: Okay. Pre-Roe, illegal abortions were often performed by unethical doctors, there were people who would sexually assault or extort people. So if a woman were to come forward and say “this happened to me, I have been exploited”, would they be able to escape a murder charge for that, and if so, how does it make it less of a murder?

Joel: Uh, this is where being a lawyer would be better because I believe that we have, I believe that we have laws against — I believe we have statue of limitations that would come into play on something like this.

Natalie: But it happens tomorrow, and the statue of limitations for sexual assault is three years, in the state of Iowa, I believe. So this happens tomorrow.

Joel: Yeah, this is one that there’s probably an admissibility of evidence consideration. The way that I understand our system works now, you would have to address the crime that is at hand, and you would have to determine by a case-by-case basis whether that is the kind of evidence that is admissible, and a lot of cases get thrown out for that kind of thing.

Natalie: Fair enough. Ok, if an abortion is cited as because of an abusive partner that they’re afraid will kill them, is this self defense murder charge…?

Joel: Could you restate that? I’m sorry.

Natalie: Ok, so if someone got an abortion and said it was because they were afraid their partner would kill them, or assault them or whatever — Abusive partners are a very common reason that people cite for not wanting to have an additional pregnancy…is that something that you as a personhood person believe that they could use a self-defense for, or would that be a situation in which you would still see it as a murder?

Joel: Oh it’s absolutely still a murder. I can’t, you know, my wife can’t claim that charge for our two year old. You can’t kill your two year old and claim it was self-defense, so why would you be able to kill a baby before birth and say the same thing? It doesn’t make any sense.

Natalie: Well, but your abusive partner can actually kill you and your two year old can’t. *laughs* You know what I mean? And it’s…

Joel: No no no, I’m saying if I tell my wife, “kill the two year old or else” and she kills the two year old is that self-defense or is that murder?

Natalie: I mean, I’m saying the third most common reason that women die in America is being killed by their partners. So I don’t think it’s unfair for someone to believe that they could be murdered if they were to continue a pregnancy with someone like that. But you’re saying you don’t think that is an acceptable self-defense?

Joel: No, absolutely not. Are you familiar with Ally Kostial by chance?

Natalie: No.

Joel: So she was a University of Mississippi undergrad who was murdered and the killer was a fellow undergrad who was pressuring her to have an abortion and she refused. And then he killed her and the unborn child, just because she wouldn’t have an abortion so I guess I would…you said that I’m not to interview you on this one so I’ll just say for any potential listeners or audience maybe that’s the flipside of that coin to consider.

Natalie: Wait, I don’t understand. The flipside is that you could just get killed?

Joel: No, the flipside is that people kill other people and domestic abuse and violent situations for not having an abortion as well. So I want you to have an abortion and you don’t have one…

Natalie: I’m talking about that case, that’s literally…if we take that case, but instead of dying she was very, very wounded and then… oh, you’re saying she was not going to get an abortion and he requested her to get one? We’re definitely getting into the weeds which I think we both probably want to jump out of.

Ok, what if any charges should the father get?

Joel: For what?

Natalie: For impregnating someone and them choosing to get an abortion. Or if that person were to pressure someone else to get an abortion.

Joel: Uh, if you pressure someone else to get an abortion you should absolutely get a charge. Male, female, anyone else. You should absolutely be charged.

Natalie: What kind of charges?

Joel: The same. Oh I love the conspiracy argument you made earlier, I think that would fit perfectly.

Natalie: That the father and the mother could conspire together and therefore both go to prison?

Joel: Mhm, absolutely. Again, that’s exactly what would happen if my wife and I conspired to kill one of our children after birth, so an extension of justice on a legally consistent grounds would dictate that that’s the same before.

Natalie: So how would you answer: I have a couple externalities that I think are really big problems in particular in Iowa. So we have an OBGYN crisis here: out of the 50 states we’re 49th, the lowest per capita, almost, save for one state, so there’s an enormous dearth of OBGYNs in Iowa, it’s a really big problem.

Joel: Mhmm.

Natalie: How are we going to manage, or are we going to provide more funding or are we going to provide federal funding for OBGYNs with the understanding that much fewer gynecologists would specialize in gynecology if…not only because of legal fears, but because when you have the ability for someone to get charged for murder, medical malpractice insurance is incredibly incredibly high. So when I’ve talked to the head of the gynecology dep…I don’t actually want to say employers, ok sorry. When I have talked to gynecologists, they’ve said that they cannot get young doctors to do it because of the cost of medical malpractice insurance, so I’m wondering if you kind of have a plan for what we should do to be sure that there are enough OBGYNs continuing, knowing that those people will often face positions that could potentially put them in the territory of getting a murder charge. And even if they don’t, the fact that they will have to carry a pretty significant malpractice insurance, more than they do now which I think is the highest of any discipline.

Joel: Right, they already do have to carry a super high…and this comes up in a lot of my articles about healthcare, is that that’s a major problem that we have, malpractice insurance and the fact of…

Natalie: But it would be much, much more expensive if you are not only hedging against litigation but against murder charges, so if you have a problem with malpractice insurance, how do you reconcile the fact that it’s going to be significantly more expensive for gynecologists?

Joel: Well murder’s a high threshold of evidence, so I don’t think that’s probably going to be the primary consideration there, but either way, even that worst case scenario the solution is across the board what I advocate for healthcare, which is tort reform. We have to reform liability laws in general and that’s going to impact the medical industry potentially faster and more heavily than any other industry because that’s where the hammer falls, so to speak. Texas did this, I wanna say 2013 something like that, and they saw a dramatic increase in doctors moving into the state. So I think that there’s a way to have tort reform, to change our liability laws and update them so that we don’t favor frivolous lawsuits and things like that that will encourage…lower the insurance rates across the board and allow more room for the specialized kind of protection the doctors and healthcare providers need.

Natalie: Like against murder charges?

Joel: Sure, I don’t foresee there being widespread murder charges though, it’s pretty easy not to murder people, ya know?

Natalie: You think that magically people will stop getting abortions because you pass a personhood law?

Joel: No and I don’t think that because you pass murder laws people will magically stop killing but I think that you’ll punish those people and other people will watch and learn.

Natalie: Ok, should these murder charges be eligible for capital punishment? If so, how do you reconcile that with pro-life beliefs?

Joel: Yeah, because pro-life beliefs extend to innocent life. No pro-lifer says that we shouldn’t defend ourselves in a war, because its a different situation, right? The people that are trying to kill you are not innocent, therefore they have violated the rights of others, therefore it’s OK to violate their rights. That’s kind of the, that’s the paradigm of somebody who is pro-life. It’s not, it doesn’t extend to, um, self-defense, it doesn’t extent to, well, arguably beyond humanity right? There’s a lot of pro-lifers that still eat hamburgers because they’re ok with cows dying. I mean, that’s what I’m saying, there are legal limits to this, er there are logical limits to this and the first of those is innocence. That’s why I try to always say “innocent human life.” If someone is mugging me in the street and threatening my wife, I’ll put them down and I won’t have a second thought about it because that’s self-defense and they’re trying to violate my rights. And so that’s, I think a false dilemma from a moral standpoint.

Natalie: Ok, so do you think that you should be eligible for capital punishment for having an abortion or no? I guess I don’t know if you…

Joel: Yeah, if you get murder in the first on that, by a jury of your peers and you are condemned with evidence along with the rest of the, throughout the American legal system just as you would in anywhere else, yeah you should be. If you’re in a state that allows capital punishment, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be, you killed someone. If you deliberately killed someone, whether that someone is four years or four months or forty years, you should be eligible for whatever punishment the law provides.

Natalie: Ok, so I want to talk a little bit about fertility clinics because underneath the personhood paradigm those would pretty much be mass murder factories, so what charges would you take against a fertility clinic who is doing IVF?

Joel: There’s technological solutions to this that I think we’d have to move toward alongside…

Natalie: Ok, but we don’t have that right now, so if we’re talking right now…do you think IVF is acceptable? Because it will always include the destruction of embryos, at least if you do it the way it is now. Should we not do IVF anymore?

Joel: I don’t think we should do it the way it is now, if it results in the destruction of tons and tons of embryos, no.

Natalie: Ok, so you think that people who get fertility treatments are murderers? Or would be under personhood law?

Joel: No, they wouldn’t be. That’s not required that they’re done that way, we do it that way for convenience. So that’s not the only…that’s why I’m saying you have to incorporate other solutions into this because when you put a new law into effect, part of the understanding of that is, well I mean there’s already protections against retroactive punishment for things that weren’t illegal at the time, right? So, there’s already that in place, the policy position on this would be going forward, this will be illegal, you need to find another way to do things. And we do that all the time, I mean tons…every time regulations change this is what businesses, healthcare providers and everyone else goes through. It’s not an atyptical process. So I think it’s something companies will have to adjust to and they’ll have to treat human life with respect and decency across the board, and I think it’s unfortunate that they’ve put themselves in a position to be financially dependent upon not doing that.

Natalie: I am appreciative of your applying this equally to fertility clinics and saying that fertility clinics should stop doing business because I think its internally inconsistent to do otherwise. So I do appreciate that.

Joel: They don’t necessarily have to stop doing business but again it’s reliant upon finding a way to do business in an ethical way. And that’s what PETA pushes for with animal providers, that’s what -

Natalie: So there’s no more…in a world of personhood, there’s no more IVF as it is now. Certainly, I understand your push for technological solutions but for the couple who is right now unable to conceive, who desperately wants a child, there is…IVF is not something you can do without the destruction of embryos. That being said, if I were to make this argument for you, I would say you could respond with something like, you could push Clomid, you could, like a bunch of different ways you could attempt to artificially cause someone to ovulate but if someone can’t…and usually be the time someone gets to the point of IVF they’ve exhausted a lot of other solutions, because IVF is the most expensive. So, you just, I think that you need to understand that it is the end of IVF if you pass a personhood law. And if you’re fine with that, I do appreciate the internal consistency there.

Joel: Mhm, well it’ll come back. They’ll find ways around it. They will find different and ethical ways to do this but we wouldn’t…ya know, again this is, it’s a moral issue and when it’s a moral issue, you can’t exempt people for reasons of convenience or companies for reasons of convenience for that matter. It’s not a reasonable solution. And the other thing that really disappears into the backdrop on all of the practicality questions, which I don’t think is fair, is the question of the current cost. So we’re saying look at all of these things that might change, all of the externalities as you refer to them, that could change. Now, just say that you accept the foundational premise that an unborn baby is an actual human person, full on deserving of the rights of an individual. Just suspend disbelief for a second and say that’s your position. If that’s your position, then what’s happening right now with the numbers that you gave, which is half million a year are being killed…how many sacrifices would it take to counterbalance that? You see what I’m saying? If every IVF clinic in the country closes and it saves 600,000 human beings per year, wouldn’t that be worth it? If you had to wrangle through the justice system and shift funding and all of the other things that you talked about… if these unborn babies are people, then the numbers clearly justify. I mean, we’re talking about banning guns all over America because people are dying at a fraction of that rate due to shootings.

Natalie: I’m not talking about banning guns. I don’t think we should do that.

Joel: Right, but I’m just saying that’s the national dialogue, right?

Natalie: Ok, so you’re saying you save 600,000 babies but there are much, much, much more embryos than that. Each couple that goes in, they usually implant around three to four every time they do a round of IVF so people usually have 30 or more saved. And you think of the number of people who have fertility issues is pretty enormous, you know destroying those embryos because you’re no longer allowed to perform IVF would be an even bigger loss of life than just if you were to end abortion, which you wouldn’t, you would end legal abortion. But if you were to end legal abortion. So I’m saying there is an externality there if you believe that an embryo in a petri dish is a human person and you’re no longer allowing IVF to be legal then you do have millions of human people in petri dishes who will be destroyed, which seems a little bit Holocaust-y. I know that I’ve seen that a number of places in your…

Joel: Right, you do have that, so you do your best, right? You do your best to save it. It’s kind of trolley problem though, right? So if you continue, then it goes on indefinitely and that number grows indefinitely larger. If you stop it you have a one-time cost in human life that you try your best to avert but you’re unable to avert it, which one do you do? Right? So this is kind of a moral…it’s a trolley problem.

Natalie: Ok, I guess I don’t know what you mean by a trolley problem. I’m just saying are you ok with the end of IVF if it prevents abortions from happening, yes?

Joel: I don’t think it will be, I think that’s a false choice. But if that’s the cost, yes. In terms of: is it worth it? Absolutely undoubtedly. I also think it’s kind of ironic to be concerned about IVF and people with fertility problems when you know the whole premise of abortion is unwanted pregnancies. I just find that to be a little bit of a conflict but, again maybe that’s a little more philosophical.

Natalie: You mean me bringing it up?

Joel: No no no no, I’m not criticizing you bringing it up, I’m just saying on the broader debate around it, isn’t it odd that we’re defending a practice that is predicated upon unwanted pregnancy, meanwhile arguing for people’s ability to conceive who may not otherwise be able to. And just saying we don’t want all of these human beings but we’ll go to any extreme to create more.

Natalie: Oh you’re saying that you are not comfortable with IVF?

Joel: No, I’m not really answering the question, I’m sort of going…I feel like I’ve already answered that question, I feel like I’m just questioning the inconsistency in holding a view that celebrates those two things at once.

Natalie: See, and that’s where you have a larger paradigm of people being able to shape their own families and I think that’s why people put the two of those things together is because control of the formation of your family includes trying to have one and not trying to have one.

Joel: I completely agree with that. Nobody should force anybody to have a kid, ok?

Natalie: Absolutely. Which is why I think that is pretty unfair to say that it’s stupid to put those things together because to me it’s inextricable because it’s about people having control. If the control is that they want to have 20 children I think that that’s amazing and a piece of my worldview, so I think it’s a little unfair to say that putting those two things together is silly because I don’t think it is, I think it’s two sides of a self-determination coin.

Joel: There’s a difference, though, because a determination has already been made at what point the child has already been created right? So like when you’ve created a life, you’ve already made that choice. It’s not like that is your moment to choose, any more than I have now a choice to kill my two year old, right? I don’t have that choice because its already done.

Natalie: You really like to talk about killing that two year old *laugh* did you have a rough night with him?

Joel: No no no no, no, are you kidding me I would jump in front of a bus for my boys in a heartbeat, I love ‘em to death. It’s just an example to kind of show people the consistency of the logic on it, which is you don’t have a choice now because that’s a separate person, right? And he was a separate person five minutes before he was born and he was a separate and distinct person at 20 weeks and he was a separate and distinct person from the moment he had his own DNA, which was only hours from conception.

Natalie: OK, so do you…if we’re continuing to look at the impact of a 31% expansion of the cases in the criminal justice system…

Joel: Nah, I completely dispute that number.

Natalie: Ok, literally any expansion. So I understand you’re going to dispute this but the best kind of conglomeration of statistics that I can find puts it at between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 people, women, will decide to…people with uteruses will decide to terminate a pregnancy. So I’m wondering if you support banning the box if we are having an influx of new felons into the economy, knowing that a lot of the positions that women hold require you to not have a criminal record statistically, like people working in childcare or working as teachers. Do you think we should be able to ask people if they’re a felon before we hire them?

Joel: Yeah, that’s a standard libertarian position, I think you should be able to be able to ask pretty much anybody anything when you’re gonna hire them. Because you need to know what’s useful for your business or not.

Natalie: So you think that’s ok and that people are just forbidden from getting a lot of jobs because they’re felons because they had abortions?

Joel: Yep. I think businesses should be able to hire and fire whoever they want for pretty much whatever reason they want and if the business chooses to forego good talent because they’re discriminatory or biased, then that’s their own loss and they’re gonna go out of business and this has been shown over and over again throughout history.

Natalie: Ok, so that wraps up everything I want, thank you.

Joel: Yeah, thanks for the discussion I appreciate the respect and I certainly hope it’s been helpful. If you have any further questions, I’d be glad to talk to you. I can point you in the direction of a lot of other folks who are the same way, but I hope…I don’t have to say “I hope” because you already said it but I do appreciate that you can see the logical consistency in what we’re going for and I think just if you try to look at things from our point of view really the only relevant question is “is that a person?” If yes, you can apply most of the normal logic that we apply to everyone else without a whole lot of distinction. And if no, then really it’s no different than wart removal, right? There’s no moral component at all.

Natalie: OK, thank you. I very much appreciate your time.

Joel: Thanks a lot, have a good night.

Natalie: You too.

Follow-up question via text August 30, 2019

Natalie: In order to prove a murder has happened, you would need to subpoena medical records. Should the government have access to those records for the 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 women who have abortions in their lifetimes, and if so, how do you support the government accessing the personal records of millions and millions of people as a libertarian? Do you think HIPAA should be repealed? That seems like a vast expansion of state power.

Joel: One legitimate purpose of the state, according to libertarianism, is to limit aggression and protect rights. Again, if you accept the premise that 600,000 human lives are being extinguished each year, then the pursuit of justice for those victims is a valid exercise in state authority. And again this is self-evident if apply it to any born human. If there was suddenly a trend of people killing their infants by injection, we would use whatever government resources necessary to bring perps to justice, and people would applaud that.

Natalie: Thank you for your time.