(LifeSiteNews) – I believe YouTube comedian JP Sears is a kind of special weapon in the battle against globalist propaganda. He wields searing sarcasm (no pun intended) like bullets against the lies rained down by the elites and their corporate minions, piercing through the absurdity of their indoctrination.
Because he has correctly identified our major worldly enemies — the global elites, and Marxists who knowingly or not, serve their tyrannical agenda — he has homed in on many of the most pressing political and cultural issues of the day: free speech, authoritarian COVID policies, gun control, child grooming, transgenderism … He takes shots at wide swaths of the globalist agenda, with such clear, well-executed exposure of their malfeasance that his viewers often refer to him as their preferred news source.
Because he is so effective in his service to the truth, and because he has declared that he loves “evolving” his thinking, it is especially worth the effort to explain his errors on an issue as important as abortion. He has even declared uncertainty about his position on this issue.
This, then, is an invitation for Sears to reconsider his position on abortion, a position that I think has a lot right, and is ripe to evolve into one more consistent with his underlying moral beliefs.
In his recent video “I was WRONG about abortion — Why I changed my mind,” he rightly condemns it as evil and “satanic.” He even gives a beautiful defense of the sacredness of children (while it may not be theologically precise, I believe it is a poetic approximation of the truth).
But in making the ultimately illogical argument that abortion should be legal up to two months after conception, Sears exposes his weakness: He still lacks a complete and coherent moral and philosophical framework for truth, leaving some gaps in his outlook.
Sears has explained that he operates as a free thinker, which in one sense I deeply appreciate, and even admire and identify with. I instinctively find repugnant the act of “outsourcing” one’s thinking, as Sears puts it.
However, there happens to be a uniquely coherent, logical, morally exemplary, and I would argue, necessary worldview that not only provides an upright guide for living but provides solid and sustainable principles for the law, which, rightly written, constitutes the guardrails we need for a peaceful, orderly, and flourishing society.
But before explaining what this worldview is, and why it’s important, Sears’ position should be made clear.
In discussing why he changed his mind on abortion, Sears points out that he used to see abortion as not only acceptable but as an “empowered” choice for women. He thought that in the first trimester, the human being killed through abortion is “not really a baby yet,” because he had heard other people say it, and “it’s a pretty convenient thing to think.”
Now, Sears says, he looks back on these thoughts as shaped by leftist propaganda, ultimately stemming from “evil, tyrannical people” who “want to keep the population of the world small so it’s easier for them to control everybody,” and who want to “destroy the nuclear family so people grow up weaker and are therefore more controllable.”
I don’t disagree here, and I think Sears is smart here to point out a major agenda that pro-abortion propaganda serves.
Sears now believes that “a baby is a baby from the moment of conception,” and therefore all abortion “is straight up killing babies,” which he rightly condemns as “evil.”
However, he says that he imagines that if he were a woman, and was raped and got pregnant, that he would probably get an abortion. “Is that still evil? I don’t know, probably, but I’d still probably get one,” he says.
He goes on to add that despite this belief that abortion is evil, he thinks abortion “should be legal for the first couple months after conception.” According to Sears, his point of view stems from his position as a “freedom maximalist.”
Sears explains that he believes that God has “assigned” the mother and father of an unborn child to “be the protectors of him or her.”
“In the name of not letting the God-given freedom and sovereignty over the mother’s being being infringed on … I do worry that outsiders stepping in to try to protect the unborn child could be an erosion of freedom that exists on a very slippery slope … ” says Sears, and then adds, “That’s perhaps for God to deal with … not for other people to play God and deal with them about.”
However, Sears seems to have a sense that his opinion here is not logically airtight. He admits that two months is “just kind of an arbitrary number,” and eventually adds a caveat:
“And I don’t know if I’m right with this part of my thinking. I just know it’s what my thinking is in this moment.”
The question of whether Sears’ position can be justified essentially comes down to the question, ‘What are the limits of freedom?’ Sears’ self-proclaimed position as a “freedom maximalist” is only morally tenable if it is qualified by legal limits as well as “merely” moral ones — otherwise murder, theft, exploitation, abuse, etc. would ravage society, totally unchecked.
Freedom is indeed a good thing, so much so that God gave us free will to choose between good and evil. But a society must establish law in conformity with God’s moral law, not just to be morally upright and to honor God, but to be truly peaceful and orderly.
This means that freedom must be restrained in certain situations, at the very least when that freedom is used to directly and deliberately harm another human being, especially if the evil is so grave as to destroy that human being’s life, and especially if that life is an innocent one.
The Catholic Christian position coherently addresses this issue. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains why legal restrictions on abortion from the moment of conception are necessary (emphasis mine):
“The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. …
“As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child’s rights.” [CCC 2273]
The catechism also mentions that abortion causes “irreparable harm” not only to “the innocent who is put to death,” but “to the parents and the whole of society.”
While many free thinkers may balk at such moral guidelines being written for them, I think that thoughtful consideration would help them to see the danger in conforming our personal moral views to what we see as most “reasonable,” since morally upright decisions are often difficult ones.
Interestingly, Sears notes that the erosion of freedom takes place on a “slippery slope,” and uses this idea to support his position that abortion should be legal during the first couple of months of pregnancy. However, what he does not directly address is that the erosion of the right to life also occurs on a “slippery slope,” as he himself has accidentally shown during this video, in which he says:
“There’s evil lunatics out there that want to be able to kill babies up until the moment of birth and there’s even a California bill that’s been proposed that would allow people to kill babies up to 28 days after birth … if you give these evil lunatics an inch they’ll take a mile, but they’ll take that mile inch by inch.”
So Sears has actually unwittingly laid the groundwork for the argument to outlaw abortion from the moment of conception. Why? Because if abortion is legal from two months after conception, we have given these “evil lunatics” an inch. And from that inch, they will take a mile, inch by inch, until infanticide and beyond is legalized.
As we recognize at every other stage of life, one person’s freedom or convenience is never an excuse to kill another human being. In the moral order, the right to life of one human being clearly outranks another human being’s right to act freely.
To argue otherwise is not only to condone a serious evil and the gravest offense against other human being, but to open up the slippery slope to the very kinds of evils JP Sears talks about: Abortion up until the moment of birth, and even potentially infanticide up until 28 days after birth.
So while JP Sears acknowledges that abortion is always evil, he must recognize too that outlawing abortion from the moment of conception is necessary even just from the practical perspective of the “slippery slope.” If we can use “freedom” to justify the killing of the most vulnerable in the womb, we can use this value to justify killing other vulnerable dependents, such as the elderly and disabled.
As precious as freedom is, it has very clearly defined limits. The deliberate killing of an innocent human being, even in its earliest stages, can never be justified in the name of freedom.