Why Men Must Speak Up About Abortion with Sean Corcoran

A lot of people treat abortion like men should sit down, shut up, and stay out of it. We reject that premise and explain why it has been so damaging, not only to the unborn, but to women who feel alone and to men who are told their grief is irrelevant.
 
We are joined by Sean Corcoran, CEO of Men for Life, for a candid conversation about men and abortion, post abortion grief, and why the pro-life movement cannot win while half the country stays passive. Sean shares his personal story of losing his child to abortion, being dismissed by counselors, spiraling into addiction, and eventually finding healing through truth, mourning, and forgiveness. From there we dig into what it means for men to protect and lead with humility, and why fathers have a real role in the decisions surrounding abortion. We challenge men to step off the sidelines, tell the truth clearly, and fight for their unborn children while still making room for real healing. If you care about ending abortion, engaging pro-life men, and building a culture where every unborn child is treated as an image bearer of God, we hope this conversation will challenge you.
 
 Subscribe for more, share this with a man who needs to hear it, and leave a review. What would it look like for the men in your life to get off the sidelines and step into the fight?

Transcript

Men’s Stakes In Abortion

Sean Corcoran 0:03

Adam's failed masculinity is what led to original sin. Men's failure of masculinity is what has led to us being in this place in the abortion industry. And that's a really big deal.

Meet Sean Corcoran

Victor Nieves 0:35

Pro-life men are quick to be shut down, will hear cries of no uterus, no opinion. But men can and should have strong emotions and feelings regarding the fate of their unborn children. They play an important role in the decisions surrounding abortion, and women often feel abortion is their only option if their partner isn't being involved, if he's not supportive. Men need to be encouraged to be a voice for their pre-born sons and daughters. Welcome to Straight Talk on Life Issues. I'm Victor Nievis, president of Life Issues Institute. Today we're going to be talking about this with my friend Sean Corcoran. He serves as Chief Executive Officer of Men for Life, the world's only consistently pro-life organization focused on the inclusion of men in human rights discussions on the conversation of abortion. Well, Sean, man, it's good to have you back. Thanks for joining us today.

Sean Corcoran 1:23

Hey, thank you for having me.

Victor Nieves 1:36

You know, I think for our listeners who may not have heard the previous times we've talked, the best place to start today, as always, is with your story. Because as we talk about men in abortion, I mean, I don't know many people who have a voice like you, who have a story and a testimony that changes hearts and minds quite the way that you do. So if you wouldn't mind sharing your story with us.

Naming Loss And Finding Healing

Sean Corcoran 1:54

Yeah, of course. You know, my story starts like a lot of men who get into pro life or a lot of men who have been impacted by abortion, it starts in college. And I was 19 years old and I was away at college. And the my girlfriend at the time came and told me that she was pregnant. You know, in my mind, the way that I was raised and the way that I was thinking about it was okay, there's a baby coming. So what do we need to do? How's this going to affect our lives? You know, what does it mean that there is a baby coming, really? And as I was working through that, she kind of stopped me and she said, Hey, I'm not going to have this baby. I'm going to have an abortion. And, you know, and I think it's important to look at the timeline. We're going back to 1997. The internet was fairly new as far as commercial use. It was someplace that you went to download music illegally, and it's very slow. It was not something that, you know, even email was fairly new for college students. And so there was no shouting your abortion. There was no social media. There was no, you know, none of this overwhelming side that we hear and see now from the abortion side. And so all it was is something that people did in, you know, kind of in secret, right? And so I didn't know anybody that had ever had an abortion. I knew what abortion was. I didn't know that it was something people actually did. So when she told me that she was going to have an abortion, the best that I could do was to say no, you know, we're we're not going to have an abortion. And it didn't really matter what I said, you know, uh, she had her mind made up and she was going to have an abortion. And so I fought against that and I lost, you know, being told that it didn't really matter what I said, what I did, what I thought, how I felt, you know, this is what was going to happen was kind of compounded by school counselors who helped her to waive her classes because she was struggling with school after the abortion. And when she told me this, I went the very next day, I talked to the very same counselor, I told them the very same story, you know, and I said, I'm the other part of this. This is the resolution that you helped this young lady with. And they said, No, this doesn't affect you. And so, because you're a man, right? And so that's kind of where I was left was two people telling me that it didn't matter what I thought and that it didn't affect me. And it did affect me. And I failed out of college, I moved home, I failed out of another college two more times. And eight years after the abortion, I was at the end of a seven-year methamphetamine addiction, homeless, unemployed, and overdosing in a hotel room, waiting for the police to arrest me. You know, at no point during that eight-year period did I ever connect the destructive behavior, you know, the negative feelings that I had and the behavior that I was doing to cover up those feelings, whether it was drugs or alcohol or women or partying or just anything that I could think of to kind of change the way that I felt. At no point in time did I connect that to the abortion because I was left with this doesn't affect you, right? And so that couldn't have been what it was. So thankfully God led me out of that hotel room and into treatment the next day. You know, I drove three and a half hours to a treatment center in a truck that hadn't had an oil change or maintenance in five years, just praying that I would make it to the treatment center. And the truck broke down in the parking lot of the treatment center. And, you know, God let me know this is where you need to be and that I was safe, right? There was, I had no phone and I had nowhere to go and I had no way to leave. And so this is where I needed to be. And in treatment, you know, in in working through how did I get how did I get from where I was growing up to where I was in treatment, the counselor stopped me, you know, in my story and said, hey, we should really talk about this. And it was when I had gotten to the point of the abortion. Now looking at it objectively, I can say my life was on an upward trajectory. Nothing else happened. And then it crashed after the abortion. But while I was in it, like I mentioned earlier, that there was just no connection made between the behavior and the feelings and the abortion. And it just made sense, right? She helped me to begin to heal. She gave me permission to mourn the loss of my child. You know, she helped me to name my child. I named him Michael, to write letters of forgiveness, forgiving my younger self for failing to protect him, forgiving the mother, and writing letters asking for forgiveness from my son and to really just begin to heal. You know, that was the beginning of my connection with the abortion and the healing process. And then I took that and began to heal everything else in my life. Got out of treatment, went back to college, went to law school, married a woman I'd been pursuing for seven years, but whom God had been protecting from me while he was building me into the person she deserved, started my own law firm and still did it. I never talked about it because I still believed I was the only man who had ever dealt with this. And on a retreat, eight years after treatment, so 16 years after the abortion, all these men sharing all these stories, you know, about things that were the hardest things in their lives, whether they were responsible or not, and everybody just pouring in grace and love. And I felt very comfortable and I just finally unloaded everything. And when I did, it was incredibly healing. But more importantly, it wasn't about me. And I had three different men come up to me on this retreat and say, I haven't told anybody this in 20 years or 30 years, but they had lost children to abortion. And so they also thought they were the only man. These three guys knew each other, right? Like, but men don't talk about it because men don't talk about it. And so that kind of led me through beginning to share my story. And still I was practicing law. We had two children, we adopted three more. And in 2021, I kind of recognized the writing on the wall that while I was really good at practicing law, I was really bad at practicing law and being a present husband and being a present father. When I say I quit, it sounds impulsive. It was a long time coming, but God provided the opportunity at that time to get out and started looking for the next opportunity. And Men for Life was an organization that had started in 2018. They started asking me at that same time, hey, will you come run this organization? And I said, no. There is no way I'm going to run a pro-life nonprofit. I don't know how to do that. I have an idea how much you're going to pay me. I'm not interested. And I said no for about 18 months. Um, worked on other business plans, was ready to roll out a new business in July of 2024. And in June of 2024, on my way to meet with a business consultant about that, God convicted me on an airplane and he said, Hey, you're going to go run this nonprofit. And so I contacted them. They were still looking. And I said, Hey, I'll take the job. And so in August of 2024, I took over as the CEO of Men for Life.

Why Men Stay Silent

Victor Nieves 7:54

You know, Sean, there's so much to unpack there. Your story, every time I hear it, it hits me again. I mean, then the number of men who share your story, I think, is what really hits me. And the number of men who, you know, they might, for the first time, they might go and try and talk to somebody like the counselor, you know, and they just have everything that they know to be true. There's this deeply wired, innate desire to protect as a man. And that's obviously very horribly violated when somebody has an abortion of your child, to be then told, no, that's not real. It doesn't matter to you. You're just a man. That shouldn't affect you at all. And so then they live the rest of their lives in many cases, thinking like you did for a while, that you they're the only one out there who's been impacted by this kind of thing. That's one of the more heartbreaking parts of just the circumstance. And men have been so beaten down on the topic of abortion. So I'm very glad to see, you know, Men for Life, you guys are doing amazing work. I'm very happy to see what you on a personal level are doing. What's your thought on the need for more men to stand up and be involved, both sharing stories like you have with your personal testimony, but also just getting in the trenches and helping to lead the fight to defend the unborn?

Adam, Abortion, And Spiritual War

Sean Corcoran 8:57

Yeah, I love that question, Victor. So I think that, and you all have recognized this as well, but there is an absence of men in the pro-life movement. And that absence of men comes from two different places. It comes from 53 years of very strong messaging from the abortion side that this is a women's issue. It's about women's bodily autonomy, it's about women's health. It has nothing to do with men, you know, and then at the same time that they're shouting the men out, the pro-life side is so hyper-focused, as they should have been, on women and babies that men just had no other message. And so they just kind of accepted it and sat this one out, you know. And if you'll allow me, I'll kind of explain how that gets into the spiritual warfare, right? Like this is spiritual warfare. Abortion is not a women's issue, it's a spiritual issue and it's a human's issue. And if we think about spiritual warfare, you know, and we think about the biblical connection, you know, Ephesians 6.12 tells us that we are in a spiritual war, not a war of flesh and blood, but a war against the principalities, the authorities, and the rulers of this dark world. And so we're in a spiritual war. Ephesians 6.13 then tells us that the first thing we have to do as we put on the armor of God is to put on the belt of truth, right? Because without the truth, nothing else matters and nothing else that we do can be effective. Well, the reason that the belt of truth is the most important is because Satan is the father of lies and he's leading the opposition in this spiritual war. If we go back all the way to the garden, right, and we look at Satan's first attempt to separate the union between God and man and woman, okay, and he gets in Eve's ear with his lies and he says, and the connection between this and abortion is so incredibly strong that when he gets into her ear and he starts with the lies and he tells her, you cannot be the woman that you were created to be. You are not good enough, you are not capable enough, you are not strong enough. If you want to be everything that God created you to be, you have to do the one thing that he told you not to do. Unless you eat this fruit, you cannot be all that you were created to be. Unless you kill this baby, you cannot be all that you were created to be, right? And then the next thing she does in Genesis 3.6, she turns, she gives the fruit to her husband, who was there. And we miss that so much when we're thinking about this story that Adam was right there. Her husband was right there the entire time, sitting on the sideline, silent and passive, watching and waiting to see what would happen. Probably thinking it's her mouth, her choice, her body, her choice. If she eats this fruit, the consequence is fully on her, putting the entire burden on the woman. If she has this abortion, the consequence is entirely on her, putting the entire burden on the woman. But men are designed to protect, to provide, to lead, to serve, and to leave a legacy that honors God. And in Adam's failure to protect his wife, to provide for his wife, to lead his wife, to serve his wife, instead of leaving a legacy that honors God, he left a legacy of death. Here we are in abortion, men sitting on the sidelines for 53 years, silent, passive, putting the entire burden on women, leaving a legacy of death. So when we think about all of this and we put it all down and we really think about how Adam's failed masculinity is what led to original sin, men's failure of masculinity is what has led to us being in this place in the abortion industry. And that's a really big deal. And if that offends men, then you know, I mean, as men, like that's sometimes how we have to be convicted, right? Like we have to accept that, hey, you know what? Like, I have not been doing my part. And unless I do my part, this will continue, it will continue to get worse. And so that is why it is important for men to say not anymore, right? Like we have to stand up. If we are in a spiritual war where men, you know, for the most part, go to the pro-life social events because their wives drag them along, right? And by pro-life social events, I mean they go to the marches, they go to the fundraisers, they go to the banquets, they write the checks. But if we as men have consigned ourselves to sit back and write checks to fund a war that we send our women off to fight, then we are failing in our own masculinity. And that is why men need to stand up. That is why men need to get off the sidelines, get into the fight, and get into the arena, is the way that I generally put it. You know, I steal that from from Teddy Roosevelt's speech, The Man in the Arena. But get into the arena, you know, get dirty, you know, and fight for life. Because if you don't, we've seen what will happen. You know, it's not just women fighting for abortion, you know, they'll say it's a women's issue, but there are men fighting for abortion and nobody's trying to stop them. And there's not men fighting against abortion. Like that doesn't make any sense. We need to be right there alongside of them. The women in this fight who've been doing such good work for 53 years should not have had to do it by themselves. It is time for the strong men in this country to stand up and fight alongside the strong women. And I know I've been talking a long time, but I want one more thing to say just to answer that question, Victor. And that is there's a Gallup poll from June of last year that 54% of men in America identify as pro-life. Only 41% identify as pro-choice. If 54% of men in America identify as pro-life and there aren't men fighting, why? Like, where are they? What are they doing? Like, what does it mean to identify as pro-life? You know, you're just passively pro-life. Like, I believe that babies shouldn't be killed. However, I'm not gonna get up and make sure that they're not getting killed. That's a failure of masculinity as well. And that's probably what the tagline of Men for Life will be is just identifying over and over and over the failures of masculinity so that if we identify the problem, then we can identify the solution, right? And the solution is to restore authentic masculinity.

Hard Truth Versus Soft Messaging

Victor Nieves 14:13

Man, Sean, I couldn't possibly agree with you more. And, you know, men, like we mentioned many, many times, we know men have a hardwired desire to protect. And we have, like you said, that poll showing the majority of men believe this to be wrong. They are pro-life. They understand that this is killing an innocent human being. All right, let's engage that hardwired, natural desire to protect and get off the sidelines. I I love that you, the line you said there of how in the world have we gotten things so backward as men that we're sitting on the sidelines. We've allowed ourselves to just be put in this box as our women go out and fight the war for us. That is horribly incorrect from a biblical perspective, from a cultural perspective. Let me just say this: there is no movement in the history of the world, there is no movement that will ever have lasting success if the men sit on the sidelines and do absolutely nothing. We're incredibly appreciative to the women who have spearheaded so many different things. Where the heck have the men been, though? I mean, that is half of the country. And if they sit there and do nothing, if we're idle, even those of us who are pro-life, if we're nominally pro-life, but we don't put any actions behind that belief, we're not going to win. As you mentioned, the other side has men fighting for them. So the pro-life side, unfortunately, for years, and there's been great men by all means, but we've seen a void. There has been a noticeable void where the men just are not present enough. So we have half of our side not showing up to battle, not showing up and getting involved. And that's terrible. That's an indictment that all of us as men, I think we need a little bit of cold water to the face and to understand. You know what? Actually, I do have a role here, in my opinion. There's been a lot of feminism that's kind of crept into the minds and it's influenced a lot of men, and they think, no, that's not my business. I shouldn't have anything to do with that. No, actually, you should, because a good man wouldn't sit idly by as we've seen what now, 65 million innocent children have been killed in this country. A good man says something about that. A good man does something about that and doesn't just, no, it's it's your call. So, Sean, what will happen? What will continue to happen, I guess I should say, if men, if the men in the church, if the men in business, if the men in leadership roles, if the men of this country remain silent, don't speak up on abortion, do you think we have any chance of ever actually ending it without the men?

Sean Corcoran 16:23

Absolutely not. Like there is no chance, you know, and I think that you bring up a good point when you bring up feminization of the pro-life movement. I don't know if that's exactly how you said it, but that's how I'll call it. So I think that it's a tough topic to get into, but I think that it's an important topic to get into, you know, and and I think that it gets into look, like when I started this job, my messaging was too soft, you know, and and my messaging was too soft because the message around pro-life is soft. And so when I tried to rally even donors who are men to support what it was that I was trying to do, it was a tough sell because it didn't make sense. It didn't connect with their masculinity. You know, why do I want to get involved in this? Why do we need men in this fight? Right. And, you know, and it just got to a point where God started giving me the right messaging to where, you know, it needs to be a harder message, like you called it, uh cold water in the face, right? And we're we're still fighting a little bit against the feminization. You know, I shared my message. Somebody wanted to talk to me about speaking at a pregnancy center fundraiser. And as you know, 90 to 95% of the people running these centers are are women. And so I always like to talk to them first about what their goals are and share what my messaging is before we go any farther. And so we had this conversation. And basically what she was asking was, does this hurt the men's feelings? Like when you say these things, does it hurt the men's feelings? And and I hope so. Yeah. Like, like, first of all, like hurting men's feelings isn't something that we should be concerned about. Like, if we're worried about men's feelings getting hurt, when we're talking about this, especially, right? Like, I don't want to discount that men have if we talk about men's feelings getting hurt by telling them the truth, then, which is that we need to fight and we need to be a part of this and that we haven't been, and we should be convicted that, hey, we have failed in this, then we're missing the point, right? Because the point is about stopping babies from being murdered. But if it gets to their heart, which I think is a better way to put it, then we're doing it right. And so I hope that it gets to their heart. You know, if it hurts their feelings, I I have men all the time comment on my social media and say, I can't believe you're blaming men, you know, and giving women a pass. And I think that it's really important to be clear that nobody's giving women a pass, right? Women who have abortions, who kill their babies, need to be held accountable. The issue is that men shouldn't get a pass either, right? Like men need to step up and do something as well. You know, it's not about not holding women accountable, it's about holding men accountable, you know. Like, how ridiculous to say we're just gonna put all the blame of this on women. Like, because that's not what happened in the garden, right? Like God went looking, you know, and he found Adam and he said, What's going on? And Adam told him what was going on. But Adam didn't say, Well, you know, we ate the fruit. What did he do? He blamed the women, right? He said, You gave me this woman and she gave me this fruit, right? And that blame of men blaming the woman for something that when we were passive and silent and failed to do anything, that is the problem. That is what led to death for all of humanity. And you can then go to Romans 5 12 and look in the New Testament, and it's very clear like because of the sin of one man, all men have sinned. Death came to all. It doesn't say because of the sin of one man and one woman. It doesn't say because one woman sinned and man failed to stop her. It says because of the sin of one man, right? And that's where we are today. Like, it's important that we take responsibility. Blame is a crappy word. So it's important that we take responsibility for our actions and our inactions and that we step up. And, you know, and your question that I'm giving a really long answer to is do I think that we will finish this, that we will end abortion if men don't do anything? And the answer is absolutely not. And look, the woman I referenced to who asked if I was going to hurt men's feelings, it falls into something that's important for this conversation. But she's also the only woman who has ever asked that question. Generally, the women who I'm talking to see the need for men. They want the men to come. They may even have tried to call them to action themselves, but have been ineffective. And so when I share the messaging that I've shared with you this morning, you know, they get excited because they're like, yes, that's the kind of man I want. I want a man who will fight for me, fight, fight with me, fight for the babies. Like, I want men to stand up. I'm tired as a woman of having to fight this fight myself. Like, where are the men and how do we get them? And they get excited. And so this isn't like fighting the feminization issue is a big deal. And I think, you know, depending on how much time we had or how many times we have to come back, I think there's a lot of issues where we can dissect how that's affected the pro-life movement as a whole in so many different parts, you know, and I think that that is something that we have to fight, but we can't fight that and bring it back to a state of truth and normalcy if men aren't in the fight.

Victor Nieves 20:50

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, men want to charge the gates. God made men and women different. We're complementary. We're not the same. And so if we have purely female-oriented messaging, and again, I can't say this enough, I am incredibly appreciative of all of the women who have fought an amazing fight. They just shouldn't have had to do it alone. That's the part that's so irritating to me is they shouldn't have had to be doing this alone the entire time. It should be men at the tip of the spear leading the charge against the gates of hell. It should be the men that are doing it. You mentioned, Sean, you know, that there's a lot of women who want men to get involved. And, you know, I would say again, that actually belongs to us as men in leadership roles in the pro-life movement. We have to be the one to rally the men. Men are gonna respond best to, yes, cold water in the face to say, come on, grab your boots, let's go. We have a fight to be fought, we have hills to conquer, we have and so there's different forms of messaging. They're gonna resonate different with different people. And so that's why I think it's so important that we remember that men and women are complementary and we are different. And if we don't have that male aspect, I worry what will eventually happen, and we can get into this territory because it's important territory for the future of the pro life movement. If we only have The nurturing and the loving side of the female, you know, that's the natural orientation that God made. If we only have that present, but we don't have the male counter to it, we're gonna get off in certain directions. We're gonna kind of become skewed. And I think we have a chance to lose sight of what true north really is sometimes. We'll get caught off on maybe performance, you know. This is a good and important issue, but it's kind of like it's related, it's on the periphery, but we have to focus again on the fact that there are unborn babies that are being killed. Yes. And so there's so much in it. I'm curious, you know, your thoughts on the feminization and and some of the messaging, because it's important to have both. It's it's important that we don't just get lost in uh I would reference it as somewhat outflanking the left on the left. I think that we've done that in the past. Yeah, you know, from time to time. We'll we'll hear an accusation that says, oh, well, the pro-life movement, you guys don't really care about, you know, babies unless you do. And then they insert some sort of a totally irrelevant thing that we're supposed to do. And sometimes we have this knee-jerk reaction of, oh, yeah, I'm gonna prove you wrong because I'm gonna go to the left. I'm gonna flank you all the way around and I'm gonna outfeminist you. Like I'm the real feminist kind of a thing. And that's that'll lose men. I'm just a warning. People might not like that, but it's true. If we try to outfeminist the pro-abortion side of things, for one, I don't think it's fruitful. For two, we're gonna lose the men. That's my belief on that. Men, men don't rally behind that. Like I said, they want to charge gates, they want to go to battle. Um, and there's a battle to be had. So, Sean, I'm curious, you know, your thoughts on the messaging on what we need to do to get those men involved.

Sean Corcoran 23:27

Yeah, I think you make a really good point. And I think that, you know, we can look at it outside of the pro-life movement and see it in in a much clearer way. We can look at a couple of different things. We can look at at the hunger for well, first we can look at the absence of masculinity, right? That's driving the hunger. The absence of masculinity comes in a couple of different places. It comes from fatherlessness, which we know to be an epidemic, is probably really the best word in this country. So the fatherlessness is a big deal that leads to young men not having mentors to show them what it means to be a man. But that absence of masculinity has led to this hunger, right? Especially amongst young men, but not just amongst young men. I mean, I've been in ends groups of men, you know, in their 40s who just never got really strong messaging on masculinity and what it means to be a man, you know, and they did the right things and they moved forward and they provide for their family, but there's still something missing and they want it. And when they hear it, they recognize it, even if they don't know what it is. And the same thing with the young men who, you know, because they never had that example, they may not know what it is that they're missing. But when they hear it, they know that that that's it. You know, and and then you see what happens, right? You you see the popularity of the first people to come into that space, people like Andrew Tate. You know, everybody's familiar with Andrew Tate. And so, you know, you see that. And look, man, just like it was great that the women stood up and did something in the pro-life movement when men weren't, you know, it was a necessary thing and men weren't stepping into it, and somebody needed to, and the women saw that need and they did it. Like, thank God, you know, just like that. Andrew Tate saw a need and he stepped into it when nobody else was, and a lot of people followed him. Millions and millions of young men followed him. And so the only thing I'll say about that is that, you know, it's not real. You know, what he is selling, a hedonistic, self-serving view of masculinity, is not real and really kind of lends itself to the toxic masculinity idea versus authenticing masculinity, you know, based in biblical truth, is something that's real, you know, and we can find our identity in Christ, then we can follow along that and it means something, you know, and it's service to others above self, living for something greater than self, you know. And I think that that is what's important. I think that one of the issues that we get to, you know, and like I don't want to dive too deep into the current divide. I think that's a a different conversation. But as to this topic, you know, we see messaging. And when I when I talk about the divide, for anyone who's not familiar, what I'm talking about is there's currently a shift or a movement to create equal protection bills. And that's as far as I'm gonna go with it. The messaging on that side has been incredibly ineffective and incredibly it's been bad rhetoric and and and they need a new marketing team. And so that is what it is. The problem is that the defense that has come has been a defense of women many times at the expense of what you call true north, right? I have read through entire threads on Facebook where all anyone talks about is the mother, and not one person mentions the baby. And so, and look, and I'm not suggesting that these people like I know many of them, that they they don't have a heart for the baby. Like, I'm just saying because of the feminization and the messaging, right, that it got missed in those specific threads that I'm referring to. Yeah.

Keeping The Baby As True North

Victor Nieves 26:42

And Sean, I think that's a perfect example, what you just brought up. The focus has to be the baby. And I think the softer our messaging, the more we, without even realizing it, we lose the focus on that baby. And it becomes about the mother. Even a good example of this also would be as it pertains to chemical abortion. We've had, I have to be careful how I say this because we've had women on the show who have had chemical abortions and it's devastating for them. And my heart goes out to them in the most, you know, I have so much empathy for people who have had to literally see their dead baby in the toilet. That is catastrophic. And we absolutely should be, you know, talking about that. The chemical abortion pill is very dangerous to the mothers, but sometimes we lose the focus on true north, in my opinion, and we'll get away from the fact that the primary victim is the dead baby in the toilet right now. The the one who was killed is still the baby. And so as we look at, we need to ban the chemical abortion pill 100%, primary reason is because it kills a baby. A secondary reason that it also should still be banned, yes, 100%, is because it does absolutely traumatize and it injures women. But we're seeing what you just described kind of in that thread, where abortion has become more about the mothers than it is about the children, the sons and the daughters that are actually being killed. And again, that doesn't discredit any of the trauma that the mothers and the fathers are experiencing because that is very real life. I understand why we would bring it up, because if women know the devastation that they may bring upon their life and their well-being, mental health, all that, they might avoid it altogether. But we again, the messaging I think has gotten soft. I think we've allowed it to happen, you know, over the years, and a little bit of that is kind of the feminization that's happened. And again, we need to have both, because I think you would probably agree, Sean, if the pro-life movement was only men, there was no female influence whatsoever, just a bunch of guys getting together. I think we probably get off pretty far too. I think we would eventually make a message that was way too hard. I think we would eventually, you know, but it's difficult because you have to have balance. That's why God made Adam and Eve, not a bunch of Adams running around. You know, we have different things that we both bring to the table as men and women, you know.

Sean Corcoran 28:40

And it's like parenting, you know. I'm gonna I'm gonna try as fast as I can to clean that up. Because when I say it's like parenting, what I mean is it's it's the balance between the relationship between man and woman, right? Like I am the enforcer in our house, right? Like I set the rules, I am very black and white and hard line on those rules. Thank God for my kids and for myself that Michelle is on the other end of that and can help to balance that out, you know, because because sometimes I'm just too strict, right? And she can help me to see that. And without her, I wouldn't see that. And my kids don't need to be raised in a military school in my house, right? Like, that's not the most effective way to parent. And so I need her for that, you know. The men need the women, and on the other side of that, like if I wasn't here, my kids would eat waffles with ice cream for breakfast every single day and would just wear whatever clothes they picked up off the floor to wherever they went, you know, because she's not gonna have the kinds of rules and she doesn't want to fight with them. And so she needs that balance as well. And I think that's kind of, you know, it's an example that that I think most people who are listening can at least, you know, wrap their heads around. And, you know, and look, I I understand because somebody's gonna say, Well, in my house, I'm the woman and I'm the enforcer and my husband. You know, look, that's not the point, right? There's outliers in every issue. The point is the balance that is necessary between the masculine and the feminine in everything. That's why God exactly. That's why God created it that way, you know, that's why it's necessary in every fight, in every battle that we go into, whether it's a battle, you know, with our kids about how they're going to act around their siblings, or whether it's a battle for the lives of innocent babies who are being killed. And I think that, you know, what I would encourage everyone, and I've been trying to encourage everyone who is on either side when we talk about this divide in the pro-life movement to do is to step back, to step back and try to remove emotion from it and to just look at what's really going on, what is the purpose of what we are doing? And and is the messaging that we're giving going to solve that purpose. I believe the purpose should be to end abortion. Now, many people are in this to help people heal, right? So their job is not to end abortion. But for those people who are in this to heal, you know, like perhaps the focus should be on healing because I believe they still want abortion to end, right? Like they don't want to just have a perpetual, they see it way more than you and I do, right? Like they don't want a perpetual list of people that need healing for the rest of eternity. They still want abortion to end, you know? And so I would say that it's important that that sometimes we just got to step back and say, hey, what is it that we are trying to accomplish? And what do we need to do in order to accomplish that? And is the work we're currently doing and are the things we're saying aligned with what that goal is?

Is Saying “Murder” Necessary

Victor Nieves 31:34

You know, Sean, I think one of the ways that we talk about hard messaging, soft messaging, and the need for a little bit of both and that balance between the masculine and the feminine. I think one of the places where this is just my personal opinion, I'm curious what you think about it. One of the places that we've kind of gotten off track is it's very common inside the pro-life movement to correctly identify that abortion is murder, it's the killing of an innocent human being. Abortion is murder. We'll say that, we'll shout it from the mountaintops. And then a lot of times we won't actually act like it. And I think that that's sending mixed signals, especially to young men. If you're a young man and you're hearing abortion is murder, abortion is murder, abortion, but you're not seeing people act on it. You're seeing this inconsistency that's showing up. And it's like, well, okay, if abortion is murder, where are the men that are like storming the gates? And I mean that, you know, metaphorically storming the gates, but where are the men that are storming the gates? If 65 million babies have been murdered in this country, we need to act like it. I have a friend, pro-life Spider-Man, uh, Mason Deschamps. He's talked about this. He's very passionate about it as well. We can't just speak these things. We can't just say, oh, this is bad. Oh, this is murder. Murder is a serious claim. We're making a serious claim when we say abortion is murder. It's true. It is a truth claim and it backs up 100%. But in some cases, we've not had messaging around that. And I understand why, because we don't want to be hitting people over the head with a two by four, and we don't want to be hurting the women that are healing. We don't want to be counterproductive to those who have healing ministries. But at the same time, you know, I think of it kind of like when we look at the gospel, we see grace and truth. We don't see grace without truth because then there's no repentance. We don't see truth without grace because then you're just hitting somebody upside the head and they don't want to listen to you. And so that's one of those issues where I think that we have to balance, we have to bring in again the masculine energy, the feminine balance to it all and try and navigate this. What are your thoughts? I mean, when we say abortion is murder, do you think that as a movement collectively, not as individuals, I don't want to step on anybody's toes here particularly, but just broadly speaking, do you think that we're saying things and then not acting on them and sending a bit of a mixed message to men?

Sean Corcoran 33:35

I think that we are absolutely sending a mixed message to men. Like when I started in this job, so the founder of Men for Life currently works at Louisiana Right to Life, and he was on our advisory board and he still serves as an advisor uh in an informal capacity to me. But when I started, and I can remember putting out a video or a post or something that said something about abortion is murder. And keep in mind, this is a man who created a men's pro-life organization. And he texted me and he said, we don't use the word murder, we use the term killing babies. And look, like my brain almost exploded trying to figure out the difference. And we just kind of went back and forth, you know, but one is softer, right? Abortion kills babies. If we say it like that, we're not calling anyone a murderer, right? Like it's the same thing. Abortion is an action, right? Someone did it, therefore they killed a baby. If you intentionally kill someone, that's the definition of murder. So I think that the messaging is, and I bring that up because it's not just women, right? It's men in the pro-life movement. The people who are running the rights to life, many of the rights to life organizations are men, you know, and they're following along with the National Right to Life Organization, which is also run by, at least to a certain degree, by men who are suggesting that the messaging of murder is too strong. And so I think that gets into the feminization because it gets into well, we don't want to hurt the women's feelings who have had abortions. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Look, and let me put this in perspective for you. I have never spoken about the mother of my child. You know what? Here's a good example. Bradley Pierce with the abolitionists took a video clip from when I was interviewed by Lila Rose, you know, of me telling my story. And then he reposted it with his commentary. And and I'll say this everything he said was correct. Okay. The problem that I had, the reason I didn't repost it is that it's not my life's work to attack the mother of my child, right? I don't know what, if anything, she has dealt with over the last 29 years. You know, I hope that she's found healing. Like I hope that she's in a good place. It's not my job to blame her for what's happened. At the end of the day, my child was killed. It led to what happened, and now I'm on a mission, and that's it. You know, I don't need it to be a mission against her. And I just say that because I understand the nuance, if you will, of, you know, women being put in a tight spot, not being given full information, making decisions. She told me the same thing people say now, right? That it was they were just gonna scrape off some membrane before it became a baby. None of that made sense to me because I lived in reality, but she didn't make that up, right? That wasn't something that she just like created in her own head. That was something that she had been told that had been drilled into her by really effective messaging for at that point, 25 years of planned parenthood. And so that's the same thing we hear today. So I tell that story just because I understand, I get it. I'm not anti-woman. I think that women who have abortions need healing and I want that healing to exist. I think that women before they have abortions need help, you know, and I want that help to exist. I think that's really important. But at the end of the day, abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human life. That's what abortion is. And every single person in the pro-life movement can say those words and believe those words and believe that what they are doing, you know, falls in line with those words. But in what place do we say abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human life? But I mean, come on, guys. Like, you know, we understand that it was the intentional killing of an innocent human life, and we really want this to stop. However, what we don't want to do is we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings by telling them that they killed their baby, you know, or by really holding them accountable. And and I want to be clear as I say that, you know, we're not talking about equal protection bills today. We probably will have another conversation about that. I do not believe that the mechanisms by which the abolitionists are trying to force these bills through is the right thing. I think there's this different solution that I will be presenting, as I shared with you offline, you know, in a few weeks, whether anybody agrees with it or likes it or not, you know, I fall in the middle of this whole conversation. I believe, though, that every unborn child is an image bearer of God, entitled to full value and human rights of any born child. I believe that it is wrong to kill babies. And I believe that if we do something that is wrong, then we are held accountable, you know, and to suggest that the accountability comes from the fact that people, when they realize what they've done, struggle, like we don't apply that anywhere else, you know. And look, and I brought up the other day for the first time the Me Too movement, you know, and I'll try to go through this quick. But if we think about, you know, it's the only comparison that I could think of. And I was interviewing Abby Johnson and I told her I was going to bring this up and that somebody eventually will tell me it's not a fair comparison and may be able to share why, but but I'll share it anyway. When Me Too happened, everyone was able to identify that for thousands of years in patriarchal society, men have been conditioned to believe that they can express their power over women in sexual ways, right? And then, you know, if we look at what happened precipitating the Me Too movement, women had also been conditioned to where they were falling into that, right? But then somebody stood up and said, you know what? This is not okay. This is not right. And when they said that, like the scales fell off of everyone's eyes. Like every man believed that it was acceptable to use and abuse women for their personal pleasure, right? Like that's horrible. But that doesn't change the fact that there was conditioning over thousands of years for people to believe this, right? Not every person thinks that it's acceptable to have an abortion. That doesn't change that there's been conditioning over the past 53 years for people to believe this. But nobody, when Me Too movement started, said, wait, you know what? It's been thousands of years of conditioning of these men. We need to take a step back before we do anything. And we need to just give them some grace and we need to find some time to say, hey, how can we help to change this messaging in a slow way without holding these men accountable right now, because it's not their fault. They've been told by generations and generations, thousands of years, right, of men exercising power in inappropriate ways. So we should really give them some grace. Nobody said that, you know, and we need to hold these men accountable immediately. And not only do we need to hold these men accountable immediately, we need to hold them to the most extreme level of accountability possible. And everyone saw it. And even men who were living that same life looked at the men who are getting caught and said, Oh, that's deplorable. Like that's horrible. And we need to hold these men accountable. You know, think about all the stories of men, and it's not really funny, it's just the hypocrisy is amusing. But the men who came out and said, Oh, God, Harvey Weinstein, that's horrible. We need to hold him accountable, and then got caught, right? Like, if we can identify evil, then it's up to us to hold the perpetrators of evil accountable. And yes, like that means holding abortionists accountable, holding the manufacturers and the people who the dispensaries of abortion pills accountable, holding anyone who is helping to facilitate abortions accountable. And then, you know, everyone else as well. You know, how do we get there is the question. I hope that everyone in the pro-life movement has a goal of ending abortion. And I will ask this question here, you know, for anyone that may hear it, you know, who has an idea of how we can end abortion without equal protection. I want to know. Like I genuinely do. Like I want to know what the solution is. I asked that question over and over and over. And here's what I get one solution is equal protection. The other side of that is opposed to equal protection without any other solution. Like, give me a solution that ends abortion. And I'm sorry, but change the culture is not a solution. Change the culture is the way in which we may achieve a solution, but what does it look like when we get to the end? And if anybody has an answer, please share it with me because I am on a good faith journey to find the answer so that I can believe that we're not just fighting each other for the sake of fighting each other.

Reaching Young Men With Truth

Victor Nieves 41:18

I'm on the list too. If you have that answer, send it to me as well, because I'd love to hear it. You know, Sean, you had mentioned as we were talking there that you're not allowed to say certain things. There's kind of this culture that, and it's not like there's the great word police that are gonna, you know, hit you in the knuckles with a ruler, but there's certain things. There's even a philosophy that we can't call abortion murder, despite the fact that it is quite literally definitionally, in in all ways, it is murder. And, you know, there's even been examples where I'm sure you're familiar, you know, the little baby feet lapel pens that you can wear. It's like a 10, 11, depends which one you get, 10 week baby feet. I've even heard that we ought not wear those because it's offensive to those who have had abortions. And that would be an example of what I would say is losing true north. We have lost sight of what we're actually here to do. We're here to stop people from killing the babies. And the baby feet pin, yeah, I'm gonna keep wearing the baby feet pin, I'm not gonna lie. And I think as we slip into that, the reason I bring that up is I think I have some credibility on this as a young man. If you want young men, that's not gonna do it. If you are looking to bring young men into this movement to help us cross the finish lines of some backup, some resources that we've not yet really had is the young men. The young men have been the ones that just haven't been really engaged yet. I can tell you that turns them so far away from focusing on us. Young men are focusing on other issues. There's political issues, cultural issues, and they're passionate about it. And they are just trailblazing on these different issues. We've pushed back on so many cultural, we've had real cultural wins in the last four or five years, many of which spearheaded by young men. The messaging there looks very different than the messaging here. If you look at the topics where the young men have won, they've picked up a mantle on something and they've won. The messaging is fitting to the men. It's not, hang on, that might hurt somebody's feelings. Hang on, that's not nice. You don't want to wear the baby feet lapel because it might offend somebody. That's gonna turn those young men off. And they're gonna say, well, what am I even doing here? What's going on? If we can't call it murder, we can't recognize it for what it is, we've gotten so lost in making sure we don't hurt anybody's feelings that we've forgotten that this is actually murder. The real reason that we're here is because there's 65 million now babies that have been murdered through abortion. And so part of the reason this is so near and dear to me is if we're we're missing those reinforcements, we're missing those young men, but they're right there. They are pro-life, as you mentioned. They have this God wired it into their brain to be pro life. I firmly believe that. But if the messaging is something that is totally counter to what fires up a young man, he's gonna go elsewhere. He's gonna use that fire and that passion that God's given him to go. Maybe it's another great topic. Maybe it's something that's, you know, very biblical and that's awesome. But if it's not our issue, it's because we're pushing them away. We're saying things that are just totally antithetical to what. That makes a young man get involved. I mean, I guess have you seen that? Is this something that maybe I'm the only one noticing? Or do you think that this is pushing young men away?

Sean Corcoran 44:08

No. And I think that something that everyone on here, you know, can wrap their heads around, or everyone that's listening can wrap their heads around, is a great example from a different extreme of what you talk about. You know, I think young men are tired of the lies. I think young men are hungry for truth. I think that you can see this when you look at there was a polarist study from last year showing that men shifted from the left to the right. Men in the 18 to 29 year old age range shifted from the left to the right. And I think it was a 7% shift, if I'm remembering correctly, which is a big deal, right? What could lead them to be shifting from the left to the right at 18 to 29, right? And the answer is that they've been lied to. They've been lied to. Young men, you know, in your generation, lied to your entire lives. And now the lies, you know, not only been lied to, right? But you grew up learning that men were the problem, right? Which is a lie. Like men can't both be the problem for the reason that everything is a failure and be completely, you know, incompetent. Like if we're so incompetent, then how did we also create all the failure? So it's just not, you know, and then you get the messaging with TV and, you know, and the dads who are all just dumb buffoons, you know, and and that's what men are hearing. And men know that's not true. And so they're leaving, you know, they're leaving the people who are telling them that boys can become girls. They don't want to be girls, and they're tired of you trying to turn them into girls. And so here they are, wanted to be men. And who's telling them they can be men? The conservative side is telling them they can be men. But here's something that's really fascinating about that. While we have a shift and from young men from the left to the right, at the exact same time, what do we see that young men on the right identify as the number one indicator of success? And this comes from an NBC poll last year that they listed 13 different markers for success. What they did was if you separate men, women, conservative, liberals to four groups, right? And they gave them 13 things, you know, children, marriage, uh, financial security, social media influencer was one of them. All four groups, this is an 18 to 29-year-old age range. All four groups chose social media influencer as number 13, right? None of them want to be a social media influencer. I don't, I don't know that I believe that. However, that's where they landed. But children, young men aged 18 to 29, identifying as conservative, those children as the number one indicator of success. Young women in that group in the conservative side chose it as number six. Men in the liberal side chose it as number 10, and women in the liberal side chose it as number 12, right above social media influencer, right? Like they don't want to be a social media influencer, but the only thing, you know, that they would that they might go for after that is kids. Okay. So young men are shifting to the too conservative, away from the lies and to the truth. And at the same time, in that truth, they see that children are the number one indicator of success. So if children are the number one indicator of success amongst young men, and we are increasing the number of young men, so now is the time for the conservative movement, but the pro-life movement as well, to grab a hold of this fire, right, while it's hot and bring it into the movement. They see children as the number one indicator of success. And if we are not giving them consistent and truthful messaging about how important children are to the pro-life movement, then they're not gonna believe us. Like they, you can tell me because you're in this age group, but I just think that amongst the young men that I've talked to, the temperament for lies or the absence of truth is very short, right? Like they're not gonna put up with it very long. Like they've been lied to long enough. They're searching for the truth. As soon as they hear inconsistent messaging, like they're gonna bounce, like you said, and they're gonna look for the truth somewhere else. If we in the pro-life movement cannot serve the truth, they will go find truth in something else and they are gonna fight. You're right, man. Like they have that fire and they want to fight, you know, and and Charlie Kirk did amazing things in raising up a generation of young men who want to take action and want to do something, who want to get out from behind the video games and get into the streets and make things happen. And we're not going to be able to get them on our side if we are not serving them with consistency and truth. And I think that we lose, right? I think that's where we lose. And I think that my messaging in many cases serves men in my generation, you know, who are older, but for the reason that we need to be setting the example for these young men of truth and of the need for men to fight for life, you know. And I don't know, that's been really effective. So I'm not gonna stop that. But, you know, maybe in through this conversation, I'm seeing that maybe there's another area to really call men to action, and that is in your age group, right? The the next generation of young men. And I think it's really important, you know, like my son's 11, my oldest is 11. Like, like I don't want him fighting against abortion when he's 20 years old or 29 years old. Like I want it to be over, and we can't end it without truth. And I think that that's what's important. So whether it's over-feminization, over-masculinization, you know, either way, it's really important that we focus on what you keep calling true north because going back to Ephesians 6.13, without truth, nothing else matters, you know, and either the unborn is an image bearer of God who is deserving of the same love and rights of any other human being, or they're not. Either abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human life, or it's not, you know, and there is no nuance there. Like it either is or it isn't. We can then say, well, what about mom? But that that's not the focus. It can't be the focus if we want to end abortion. It can be the focus if we want to help mothers, right? Like if we want to turn our movement into a movement that is for serving mothers who have been wounded by abortion, like that's a great cause, man. Yep. There's a lot. There's millions, millions of women who need that. That is an amazing cause. Is that the purpose of the pro-life movement?

Victor Nieves 49:59

No, not. It's not. And it's an amazing like that's the thing. I have great personal friends who are in the healing ministry, and I love them to death. I think that what they do is absolutely amazing. But it is also, it is a part of being pro-life. It is a part of pro-life ministry. It's not the goal of pro-life. The goal that's kind of a downstream-upstream distinction where we have the downstream of abortion is hurting men and women. And we need people that are downstream collecting. I have a good friend, Jonathan Storms, says it this way. We have a troll standing on a bridge and he's throwing babies off of the bridge into the creek. And we have these ministries that are downstream that are collecting the babies out of the water. They're saving people from the damage that has been done. Where's the guy who goes and cuts the head off the troll and stops him from throwing the babies off the bridge? The goal is still to kill the troll. The goal is still to stop this upstream, upstream. Yes, you know, collect what's going on downstream 100%. Love those guys. Let's take the head off the troll. And so when we look at it through those lenses, I'll say another thing as we talk about men in abortion.

Sean Corcoran 51:00

And here's the problem, Victor. And I don't want to cut you off, but if you bring up a good point, the problem is that when you use that analogy, because of the feminization, someone will come out and say, now you're saying we should cut the head off of women. Now you want us to execute women, right? Yeah, you're right. And that's not able to say that's not what you said. It's not what you meant. You know, it's not even close to the truth. But because we have gotten so far into like our focus, like tunnel vision on mom, you know, you can't have meant anything else.

Victor Nieves 51:30

Let's play this out. Say that exact thing because you're 100% right. That will happen. Young man makes the troll bridge baby analogy, right? And he's immediately met by the pro-life movement with that, don't say that. Okay, that guy's leaving. I'm telling you right now, that guy's gonna pack his bags and he's gonna go somewhere else and he's gonna fight for another cause that he believes in, where he's not gonna be tone policed about stopping the murder of innocent children. He's gonna pick up his bags and he's gonna go. I'm telling you, this happens. I don't know a single young man who's on fire for the Lord, who's deeply conservative, wants this country to return to maybe traditional values and things like that. I don't know a single man who would respond kindly. And maybe that's just part of being a young man. Sometimes, you know, you just want to fight. And so but we have to accept reality. We have to know that that's reality. And when you go to that young man who says, All right, I'm going upstream and I'm gonna cut the head off the troll, and you tell him, uh, that you really shouldn't talk like that. That's very offensive. He says, Okay, all right, I'm out of here. I mean, this is do we really believe what we're talking about? And he's gonna pack his bags and he's gonna leave. And we've seen this happen, and maybe it hasn't been called out directly enough over the years. We've seen it happen. That's why there's not young men who you know, there are, obviously. I I think I'm one of them, but there are young men that are talking about this, but it hasn't. You brought up the gender stuff, you brought up some of these other things. Young men are spearheading that. There are young men that are just knocking doors down over the gender stuff because they're mutilating children. Okay, I know another place where children are being mutilated. It's abortion. Right. I know a place where they're being ripped to pieces and then reassembled on a table. Yes. I'm familiar with what's happening in this case. The young men would have as much zeal, as much fire, as much, you know, righteous, burning passion to go and put an end to this if we would let them. Let the dog off the leash, let the young men run. And I'm telling you, they're gonna help this tremendously if we will let them. Another thing that I think is kind of it's stifling the fire of young men is we have this philosophy, and I understand why it has crept in, although I think it's perverse, not like in a mean way, but I I think inherently this mindset is actually counterproductive. And Sean, I know that I've heard you talk about it. I know I've heard Abby Johnson talk about it. I think Seth Gruber's talked about it and a few others. I don't want, I'm a young guy, I could be doing this for another 40 years. Totally could be doing this role for another 40 years. I do not want to do that. I love the work that we do. I want to end it. I want to finish this. Again, cut the whole head off the troll. I want to be done with this. I don't want my kids to be picking up a mantle and saying, I'm gonna do another 40 years of trying to stop this. How about we just stop it? And so obviously, we have to be realistic. Maybe we're not gonna stop it literally tomorrow, though that would be awesome if I had a button on my desk that would do that. I'm hitting it. Right. We might not stop it tomorrow, but if we have this mentality that it is necessarily another 50 years, it's gotta be another 50 years. Why? Why does it have to be another 50 years that we're gonna be fighting this fight? Right. Burn it down and not like in a crazy person way, but like go after it, man. Things can change and they can change quick. You almost put people in a box and you put these young men in a box and you say, well, it's gonna take like 50 years. What you're gonna do now, it's really trickle. It's a really slow kind of a thing. Well, that's sort of self-fulfilling. That's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we say that, well, this is gonna have to take 50 more years, well, we're probably right because now that's the frame of mind that we've entered into this battle with. I don't think they thought that on D-Day. I don't think that they showed up and they thought, well, we'll be here for about 50 years.

Sean Corcoran 54:43

God, can you imagine if Donald Trump right now came out and said, I think Iran, yeah, we'll be done over there in 50 years.

Victor Nieves 54:49

50 years. Who's signing up for that fight?

Sean Corcoran 54:51

Yeah.

Victor Nieves 54:52

I don't know any young men that are gonna go put the boots on and say, yeah, 50 years, and then I'll pass it down to my kids. And then my kids will continue off the, you know, the fighting in the Middle East or something. That kind of a mentality, I think, very subconsciously, very innocently, I don't, and again, I don't think that this is like intentional that people are doing it. I think it's natural that we fall into it. It's been a long fight. We kind of get into that mentality. It's gonna be a lot more, it's gonna take a long time to continue to go through this, but that almost puts a lid on things. That almost strangles it in the crib in a way, not to use a bad analogy on the topic of abortion, but it's like it kind of fizzles it out for some of the young men. They want, they want to go, and I tell you what, man, never undercut what happens. We're seeing young men make a shift toward Christianity that is unprecedented. We're seeing young men take a shift toward traditional, conservative kind of values, family-oriented, that is literally unprecedented. I don't know if it's ever been documented to this degree in this short of a window of time, ever. My generation don't underexel those men. I'm telling you, if you let them run, don't be shocked if this isn't a 50-year fight. Don't be shocked if they actually do get this thing done. And that's on the shoulders of giants. That's on the 50 years of people who came before them. It's not to discredit those who have fought, you know, tooth and nail to get us here. But when you're Washington, when you're General Washington and you've got Cornwallis, you know, backed up against the Atlantic Ocean, you end it. You go for it. You don't say, well, we'll be fighting Cornwallis for another 50 years. No, if you have the chance, send it. And I think young men need permission to be young men with guidance, with good, godly leadership and examples and stuff like that. But don't undercut them because I'm telling you, we've seen what they did. Think about some of the gender issues. What did it look like five years ago? What did it what does it look like today? It's a near complete cultural inversion. We've seen so many the pediatric associations are changing their so many different that's shifted a lot. It went from a hundred miles east to a hundred miles west, where all of a sudden we change direction. That can happen here too. And I would encourage people not to get into a mentality that because that's to me, as a guy and knowing guys, that's another turnoff. That's gonna turn people away and they're gonna go fight for another cause. I want them to fight for our cause.

Ending Abortion Faster Than Expected

Sean Corcoran 56:54

Yeah. I agree, man. Like I'm just gonna be completely honest with you right now, like transparent, as you're talking about it being 50 more years, you know, I don't have 50 years left. And at least not to do what I'm doing at this level. And I don't want to, man. Like, I don't want to be doing this in 50 years. Like, I believe that God has led the mission of men for life to change into restoring biblical masculinity, because if abortion ends, when abortion ends, that is something that can persist because it's still important, right? You know, I can't imagine like to echo kind of what you're saying. Like, like, I don't even think I want to be part of something that's going to overall say, you know, this is gonna take another 50 years, especially, Victor, if there's not, this is gonna take 50 years and this is why. Here are the steps that we are going to take. This is what it's gonna look like in five years, this is what it's gonna look like in 10 years, this is what it's gonna look like in 15 years, this is what what it's gonna look like in 40 years, right? To just say this is gonna take another 50 years because it's taken 50 years to get here is a load of crap. And the truth is, and I point this out more commonly now, but but if we think about, you know, I mentioned earlier that when my son was killed on an abortion 29 years ago, the internet was new, right? If we say Planned Parenthood in the abortion industry has had 53 years of effective messaging, which they have, they have not had the resources that we have today, right? We have the resources we have today to be able, and if we started using these resources for messaging, counter messaging, instead of using our resources and our money to fight against other people in the pro-life movement or other people who are trying to end abortion, you know, the commercials and the messaging and in like all of the it's gotta be millions of dollars being spent to fight against people who are trying to end abortion, which is just absurd, even if we don't agree with the way they're doing it. If we spent that money on messaging and counter messaging against with all of the technology and the ability we have to get into someone's bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, you know, on their phone in their pocket all day long, every day, like we could end this in in five years, right? And that's where I'm at. Look, and you know, the way that I've been saying it is I believe that we can end this in two to three years. I think there is a clear path. I think that it takes everybody working together, you know, and whether or not it's my job to get everybody to work together or not, you know, is hopefully not hopefully that's not my job. But uh it's gonna take courage. If my job is to put it out there and get people to see it and get people to think about it and say, you know, or even to say, hey, this is something that has been proposed. If we tweak it a little, it's even better. I like no ego, you know, from my standpoint. But maybe it's just my newness in this that allows me to kind of take a more objective look at it, you know. I haven't been sucked into one way of thinking or the other. And, you know, but but I think two or three years, man, like I think in two or three years that if we do this the right way with everybody working together, that bills can pass while people who believe that we should be focused on mothers can still be happy that we haven't lost sight of mothers. Like, I believe that in two or three years we can do this. It it takes everybody working together. I think that 50 years is daunting. And I think it's two things. It's one, it's failing to recognize the reality of the situation or failing to recognize what it is that we set out to do to begin with. And number two, it's failing to submit to the power and will of God. If God wants this to end, God will end this. David didn't go out there and face Goliath and say, Hey man, I'm gonna need to go work out for six years before I come back and fight you, buddy. No, David went out there and he looked at Goliath and he said, On this day, the Lord will deliver you into my hands, because it wasn't David that was doing it, right? It was God that was doing it. And still God sent David, like he was the humanity part of it that had to accomplish what it was that God was trying to accomplish, right? We are that humanity part in the pro-life movement, but it is not our fight. Like if this is a spiritual war, this is a war that only God can win. And if God can win this war, then God doesn't need 50 years. And for you to suggest that God needs 50 years to end this war is to deny the power of God. And so if we believe, every single one of us, the abolitionists, the establishment, and everyone in between believes that we are doing this because every human life is an image-bearer of God and we should not be taking innocent human life, right? Then God wants this to end. And if we believe that God wants this to end and we are faithful in that, then we cannot neglect the power of God to end it immediately. You know, as the abolitionists, I'll say this because one of them told me the other day, we don't really think these bills are going to pass immediately. We want them to, but we think this is gonna take years. We are also instructed not to toil in vain. So if there's a way to take a step back and to look at it and say, is there a way that we can be way more effective in two or three years with all the tools that God has given us, then we need to honor him by doing that. And look, then I've got plenty of messaging for the other side too, right? Like I just I think that I used the word immediately because God does have the power to end things immediately. But I think that's probably gonna be a longer conversation for another day.

Victor Nieves 1:01:56

Well, but Sean, I mean, so when you said you think it could be two to five years, it could be quick. There's gonna be somebody who heard that and they think, what's this guy talking about? It's just because he's it's just because he's new. And Sean, you and I kind of have this in common. We're the new guy on the block, in a way. And Sean, you know, to your point, like I was saying, there's gonna be somebody who thinks, oh, Sean's crazy. I'm so glad that you brought up, for one, the example of David and Goliath. And when he went out there and said, God's gonna deliver you into my hands, in the same way that somebody heard you say, we're gonna end this thing soon. And they thought, what the heck is he? That doesn't make any sense. How is that even possible? What do you think the the Philistine army thought when David walks out there with a sling and he's looking down Goliath, he says, I'm bringing you down today. Do you think it made sense to them? You know, they found out on that day that one person plus God is a majority no matter what they face. It doesn't matter what's standing, it doesn't matter if it's Goliath, it doesn't matter if it's Planned Parenthood, it doesn't matter what it is. God can bring them down today. And so again, I I'm not one to want to try and limit God. If God wants to bring it down today, let the sling come from my hand. How about that? I mean, that should be the mentality that, or the rock, you know, from my sling. That should be the mentality that we all have going into this. Here I am, Lord, send me. Let's do it right now. And I hope to see that that is rising up. I think it is rising up. I think that that some new blood can be good. And again, that's not unappreciative of the people who have done it for 40 or 50 years. I will always say on the shoulder of giants, there's a lot of work that has been done. I am immeasurably grateful for everybody who's worked tirelessly on this. I think they've gotten us into the position that we can pull the trigger. We can finish it. 100%. We're we're here. We can do it. And sometimes it's that naive young blood. It's the new people on the block that look at it and say, with fresh eyes, and they say, I think it's right here. I think we can actually do this. Sean, man, you and I could go on and on about this. Maybe we'll have to do it. We'll have to, some other time, we'll have to do another podcast just to talk about these sorts of things. But this has been great. This has been such an important conversation on men and abortion. And hopefully you've enjoyed it, but hopefully the listener, it'll be, it'll be fruitful for them as well. So, Sean, thank you so much for coming on today.

Sean Corcoran 1:03:57

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Victor. I enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to doing it again.

Victor Nieves 1:04:10

You know, today's conversation has been very encouraging to me. I love talking with Sean. He's been a fantastic guest every time we've had him on, but we see a tremendous need. We need men to be involved in the fight for life. We're very, very appreciative of all of the women who have tirelessly, I mean, they have shed blood and tears and everything else that you could possibly give. They have given to this movement. And there's been a lot of great men that have been involved as well. But we need collectively, generally speaking, in the broad population, we need men to get involved, to strap on their boots, to go and charge those hills. And if we have that, I believe it'll change everything in the national conversation surrounding abortion. If the men get involved in a way that they have not yet been involved, everything will change. I encourage you to go to our website, lifeissues.org. You'll find resources and information to help us make that a reality. Get the men involved. Share it with your friends, your family members, your church, community as we fight to end abortion. Again, that's available at lifeissues.org. Be sure to tune in next week for another straight talk on life issues.