Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose started her undercover work as a teenager, posing as an underage victim of sexual abuse seeking an abortion — but with a camcorder hidden in her blouse to document her conversations with Planned Parenthood workers.
Her undercover videos captured the attention of the nation, if not the world, prompting heavy scrutiny of the abortion giant and its practices.
Since then, Live Action has amassed 6 million social media followers and 1.7 billion lifetime video views. And Live Action says its testing has found that Live Action’s content has changed the hearts of 43% of those the organization surveyed on abortion.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rose for a Daily Signal interview, during which she shared that she had done a lot of acting in high school and found it natural to empathize with the plight of a girl grappling with an unexpected pregnancy and to pose as this victim, sent by her abuser to do away with the baby.
“I’m 15,” Rose said she told the worker. “He’s much older than me, 24. What do I do? I’m pregnant.”
“In the state of California, that should immediately trigger mandatory reporting,” she explained. “But the Planned Parenthood worker, without blinking, told me to lie about my age in the paperwork to get a secret abortion, and no one would know anything.”
Rose believes the abortion industry wants to perpetuate negativity around motherhood.
“Planned Parenthood is not interested in women having their babies and they’re certainly not doing anything to support those women,” she said. “They’re interested in women killing their children.”
But the Live Action founder also emphasized that modern society faces an existential crisis in which people fail to realize that true happiness comes from relationship with others.
“We’re all seeking happiness, but we think we’re going to find it in career or we’re going to find it in fame or wealth or some sort of material thing when really it can only be found in people,” she explained, noting that the ultimate person through which people will find happiness is God. “And so we reject our own children because they’re a threat to happiness when really they’re actually a key to happiness.”
During the massive protesting that took place following the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned (and in the months since then) I have frequently heard pro-abortion protesters say that abortion is necessary to allow them to have consequence-free sex.
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“Every action has a reaction or some kind of a consequence, right?” she said. “You turn off a light, the room goes dark.”
“There’s a natural action that can come from sex, which is new life,” Rose continued. “And that’s a beautiful thing. That’s how we all came into the world. And that’s beautiful. It’s good.”
“Sex is designed to bring life into the world,” she noted, adding that this is “only seen as a horrible thing because we want to have sex recklessly and on our own terms and we want to divorce sex from its power to bring life into the world, which no matter how much we try to do … it can still fail and pregnancy can happen, which is why we have the abortion rate.”
“If people only had sex with someone that they loved and were committed to and that they were open to having a child with, the abortion rate would disappear,” she said. “And I think the opposition, the pro-abortion side know that, so they’re trying to brainwash us into thinking that sex without consequences is a thing when reality proves otherwise, and trying to brainwash us into thinking that a child is bad.”
Rose and I discussed modern-day crises of motherhood and fatherhood. She stressed the importance of life advocates “empowering men to man up” and act as strong fathers and husbands.
I also asked her to give advice to women who potentially grew up without a strong father in their life, or who suffered under an abusive one, and repeatedly choose mates who will similarly treat them badly.
“Take a step back, read the story of your own childhood, and look at what was good,” she suggested. “Because in all our childhoods, there’s something that’s good, right? There’s something beautiful.”
Then, she suggested, do the work of addressing what was bad in our childhoods and what was missing, to help recalibrate our views on what a good father, husband, and man looks like.
“There are good men out there,” she insisted. “There are great fathers out there. Even if you had a really troubled upbringing, you can have an amazing future. That doesn’t destine you to any negative thing.”
“What kind of woman do I want to be for the kind of man that I want to be with?” Rose urged women to ask themselves.
Check out my full interview with Rose via “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
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