Thursday, April 4—The Young Americans Foundation chapter at Boston University hosted conservative pundit, Matthew “Matt” Walsh, a contributor and talk show host at the Daily Wire. The Daily Wire is a conservative talk show with Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan and other notable conservatives. His talk was titled, “The Modern Battle over Abortion.” Throughout his talk, he discussed several issues surrounding the current pro-choice agenda and platform, and presented counter-arguments to many arguments presented by pro-choice politicians and news organizations.
Walsh began his talk with his opinion stated very plainly and openly, “Abortion is an abomination and a brutal and deranged practice.” By beginning his talk with plainly and openly describing his beliefs, he was then able to begin defending his clearly unpopular opinion. He ended his opening statement with the following line, “If human life is not precious, then our forefathers died in vain.”
He began the bulk of his speech by summarizing and presenting his opinions regarding the mainstream pro-choice argument. He begins by stating that the pro-choice dehumanizes the child, or as the pro-choice movement would label it, a fetus, or a clump of cells. This child within the womb, Matt Walsh argues, has unique human DNA and is thereby a distinct human, separate from the mother. Although the child is fully reliant on its mother to sustain its life, Walsh argues that the child is still unique and that personhood is not acquired by degree of achievement.
Walsh continued his talk unboxing more common pro-choice arguments regarding rare instances where abortion seemed to be the absolute necessity. In rare instances of rape and incest, Walsh argues that this is an improper argument in favor of abortion because these rare instances should not mean legal widespread abortion for the public. He continues by asserting that “there are no cases where an abortion will directly lead to the saving of the mother’s life.” He asserts that although there are medical procedures that put the fetus’ life at risk, a direct abortion of the fetus is never a medically necessary procedure that would save the mother’s life.
He concluded by making a comparison of modern day abortion practices and the practice of slavery. He creates this equivalency using several factors within each respective argument. He states that in both cases, slaves and fetuses are seen as property, and their respective owners can do what they wish with their own property including terminating the life of their property. Another major comparison he created was denying the humanity of each subject. By denying the fundamental humanity of both slaves and fetuses, pro-abortion and advocates of slavery can do what they wish with their property.
He concluded his speech by addressing the common criticism that he is a white male and his opinion concerning abortion is irrelevant. He ends saying, “Abortion is murder and truth is truth.” Upon ending his speech, the floor was opened up to a Q&A session and out of about 16 questions, only a mere one was truly critical of his point and questioned some of his statements, the other questions were mere points of clarification or questions relevant to the main argument. In the conclusion of the speech, Walsh was confident in his argument and he had presented his argument in a clear and while controversial, his limited statements were designed specifically in an inflammatory manner.