Josh vs the Anti-Abortion Activist

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Society & Culture, Education, Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Self-improvement

4.5 • 905 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For an issue we don’t normally know how to talk constructively about, can Josh and one of the most outspoken anti-abortion activists model what a genuine, but respectful, disagreement can actually look like? Joanna Howe is best-known for her viral videos on YouTube and social media debating people in the street about abortion, confronting politicians outside their offices, and smacking down pro-life politicians for not being pro-life enough. She's a law professor and a Catholic whose hundreds of thousands of followers cheer her on as she owns the libs and argues for abortion to be illegal because it is murder from the moment of fertilisation. She joins Josh to have a rational debate about an emotional topic, and try in some small way, to help you have less toxic and more constructive conversations of your own. You can find Josh’s previous conversation with the American family-values anti-surrogacy activist Katie Faust, here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm not pro-life. I'm anti-abortion. I'm against abortion.
0:03.1	My only encouragement would be far be it from me to tell you how to do your job.
0:07.8	There are a lot of things that are worth bringing to people's attention in this space,
0:11.9	and there's probably a lot of common ground that you can win and are winning,
0:16.2	and may even be magnified if people didn't feel like to go along with you would also mean that
0:24.0	they're going to be subjected to a highly, what they would regard as being a highly
0:28.9	intrusive and authoritarian and absolutist approach towards even the most sympathetic cases.
0:38.2	Goody, humans.
0:39.7	Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
0:42.7	Today, one of the Internet's most outspoken anti-abortion activists joins me in the studio.
0:49.2	We try to model, I suppose, how to have genuinely uncomfortable disagreements about issues that we don't normally
0:56.0	know how to talk about constructively across the aisle. Joanna Howe is a law professor and a Catholic.
1:03.4	She's best known for her viral videos on YouTube and on social media where she gets into arguments
1:09.1	with people on the street about abortion, or she
1:11.3	confronts politicians outside their offices, or she smacks down politicians, even if they're
1:16.7	pro-life for being inadequately pro-life. Joanna genuinely believes that abortion should be illegal,
1:23.4	and it's part of her deeply held conviction that abortion is murder from the moment of fertilisation.
1:29.7	If you haven't heard an episode that I did last July with the family values activist
1:34.5	and the anti-sarogacy campaigner from America named Katie Faust, that is also worth listening to.
1:41.4	That became one of the most effective episodes of this show ever in terms of, I suppose, modeling a rational debate about a very emotional topic. And so I hope that doing more of these kinds of things is some kind of a help to you and your loved ones in figuring out how to have less toxic and more constructive conversations about
2:01.9	some of the most sensitive issues in the modern world. I hope you enjoy as much as I did,
2:06.8	the one, the only. Joanna Howe.
	...

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