By Lisa Andrusko
Editor’s note. To order audio recordings of the National Right to Life 2023 Convention speakers, please go to nrlconvention.com
Seth Dillon, CEO of the satire news site The Babylon Bee:
“There was a lot of chatter on Twitter about this Supreme Court [Dobbs] decision. I think it was Michelle Obama who said the Supreme Court has taken away the right to abortion. They didn’t take away a right. The Court just stopped pretending that that right ever existed.
“I may run a comedy site but I talk about the abortion often. I don’t know why it comes up so much but it does. And whenever I do talk about abortion I always hear from somebody who says I should just shut up and stick to cracking jokes. They try to put me in my place and say, ‘Why do you care so much?’ And I almost always respond the same way. ‘Why don’t you care? What possible reason could I have for not caring? In fact, I can think of about 60 million reasons why I care.’
“So I always try to turn it around on them every single time and make them defend their callousness and their complacency in the face of unspeakable evil.”
Seth Dillon spoke at the National Right to Life 2023 Convention closing Banquet.
Wesley J. Smith, J.D., award-winning author and internationally renowned expert on bioethical issues:
“Once you decide that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering you dehumanize the people who are going to be killed. When you create a killable caste of people, you have stripped them of their equality. And you have stripped them of their humanity. And in some sense they become objects instead of subjects. It is a complete rejection of everything that Western civilization has worked to create over the last 600, 700 years in terms of equal moral worth for every human being without regard to capacities or any other kind of qualification. …
“By the way, bioethicists are pushing using live harvesting [of organs] as a means of euthanasia. They are pushing the idea that if we’re going to harvest the organs of people who have been euthanized, why do the lethal injection? Why not just live harvest them because that will be better for the organs.”
Wesley J. Smith, J.D., spoke at the convention general session titled, “Assisted Suicide: It’s Worse Than You Ever Imagined.”
Alex Schadenberg is the executive director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and of EPC-USA:
“One more thing on organ donations. Why would you lethally inject someone and then take their organs if you can take their organs without lethal injections? If you get lethally injected, we can’t use your heart. We can’t use your lungs. …
“Well doesn’t that seem like a great waste? Let’s be perfectly honest. If you’re going to kill somebody, why would you do it that way? [Harvesting the organs from people while they are still alive] is going to be the big push because it doesn’t make sense not to.”
Alex Schadenberg spoke at the convention general session titled “Assisted Suicide: It’s Worse Than You Ever Imagined.”
Benjamin Watson, former NFL tight end, author, and vice president of the Human Coalition:
“There’s this stat that always hits me really hard when women phone to our Human Coalition call centers or perhaps come through our doors or our pregnancy resource centers. Seventy-six percent of these women who are seeking abortions say they would prefer to parent if their circumstances were different. …
“The compassionate part is stepping into someone else’s shoes and saying, ‘what’s the situation, what’s the context, what are the reasons you might make this decision more than someone else would?’ I believe that’s how we love people in the new fight for life.”
Benjamin Watson speaking at the convention general session titled “Divided Hearts of America.”