Roger Marsh: The following program is intended for mature audiences, listener discretion is advised.
Hello everyone and welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. Mother Teresa called abortion, "The greatest destroyer of peace in the world." Our guest today was inspired at a young age to expose abortion for what it is, the killing of pre-born babies. Lila Rose is the founder and president of Live Action, a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate the public about pro-life issues, also investigating and exposing the lies of the abortion industry and mobilizing pro-life advocates around the world. Lila is a writer, speaker, and human rights activist. She has appeared on many media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, CBS, BBC, and ABC Nightline.
She has addressed members of the European Parliament and has spoken at the United Nations Commission on the status of women. Today on Family Talk, Lila Rose joins Dr. Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors to talk about her brand-new book called, Fighting for Life, Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World. They'll be discussing the beginning of Live Action, some of Lila's first investigative work, and there'll be sharing some advice for other young world changers as well. Let's listen now to today's edition of Family Talk.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Lila, thank you for joining us. So exciting.
Lila Rose: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Tim Clinton: As we get started, Lila, Live Action, one of your main focuses over the years has been investigative journalism. And one of your very first investigations was called the "Mona Lisa Project." Can you tell us a little bit about it and how it all came about?
Lila Rose: Sure. Well, we've done a lot of investigative reporting over the years at Live Action because we understand that the key to reaching people, changing hearts and minds and shutting down the abortion industry, quite frankly, is to expose many of the abuses that are taking place in America's abortion clinics. The reason that it's not exposed typically is because the media actually usually covers for the abortion industry. They're not interested in exposing the misdeeds. They're usually ideologically pro-abortion, so there's a lot of unaccountability that happens. And so what we've done over the years is expose different abuses and illegal activities. And you mentioned the Mona Lisa Project, that was one of our first investigations nationally. I did it as a college student when I was first starting this sort of reporting. And what we documented in that project was the rampant sexual abuse coverup of underage girls.
So Planned Parenthood is a mandated reporter, they're the biggest abortion chain. They see a lot of young girls, they market to young girls, but they're also effectively marketing to abusers because if you're a, abuser, a rapist, your a victim, this young girl or child gets pregnant, you want to find a way to secretly do away with that pregnancy to cover up your crime. And so, abusers like to take their victims to a clinic, an abortion clinic, that won't ask any questions. And even though Planned Parenthood were required to do this by law, they do not report it. I mean, I posed as a 13-year-old going into an abortion clinic at Planned Parenthood, saying I have a 31-year-old boyfriend. I mean, clear case of statutory rape and Planned Parenthood says, "I don't care. I don't want to know the age of the boyfriend." And then arranges a secret abortion. This has happened 17 different times where they've been ultimately assisting the abuse of young girls. And this has been just our documentation of the problem, but there's also court cases, Dr. Clinton, where we've actually had seen young girls sue Planned Parenthood or name them in their lawsuits because they are calling them out for the abuse that they endured, where their abuser was not held accountable by the health practitioner that Planned Parenthood claims to be. So it's just one element of the many abuses in the industry.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Lila, Live Action has done a lot of investigative reporting since then basically revealing Planned Parenthood as being complicit in sex trafficking, gender-biased abortion, late-term abortion, and more. It's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable. And we hear this narrative and yet it seems to fall at times on deaf ears. But let me go back, I want to make sure people understand you just for a moment. You were 14 years old when you began this effort.
Lila Rose: So I started as a young teen, I started Live Action. I was 14 when I first prayed outside an abortion clinic and wanted to start a pro-life group. It became officially Live Action when I was 15 and this was born out, I share in my book, Fighting for Life, the kind of trajectory of what it means to find your cause and step into your calling because we're all called, I believe, to the most important causes of the day. This isn't just my story, but it can be all our story that we have a difference to make. I think God created us at this particular time in human history for a reason and the needs of the world do often correspond to the interest and even the heart-brokenness that we experience. And so I share how, when I found out about abortion as a young girl, I was just heartbroken by it.
And I discovered 3,000 abortions a day, at the time. I saw the victims of abortion. I actually saw an image of a child in the first trimester who was 10 weeks old with these beautiful arms, legs. You could see a tiny little face that had been ripped apart by a first trimester suction abortion. And seeing this, it's just it's heartrending. And I had the moment of moral clarity at a young age, that blessing of moral clarity to see this as an atrocity, it's a human rights abuse, and I have to do something. I can't pretend like it's not happening, even though it's an unpopular cause in some ways or a controversial cause, how we treat our children, if we provide them their fundamental human right of life, it makes or breaks our society. So, heartbreak was the inspiration and learning about the cause, and then that got me starting Live Action, not fully knowing what I was doing, but just stepping out there and say, "I got to do something." And that was the beginning.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You know, as I've looked over your story and got into the pages of your book Fighting for Life, I was moved by how you were shaped, how God was preparing you as a little girl. And Lila, I want to introduce our listeners to a little bit more of that narrative, because I think as we discuss the topic today, it'll take on a whole different level of meaning. It certainly did for me. Lila, first of all, I didn't know you were one of eight children. I'm one of eight.
Lila Rose: Oh, no way.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. You have five brothers. I have five sisters. We're going to have to compare notes somewhere along the way, Lila.
Lila Rose: That's awesome.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You actually opened the book, by the way, with a story, a chilling story of a dream. Can you share that a little bit with our listeners because that recurring dream is really significant to you?
Lila Rose: Sure. Well, I talk in the book about, again, the power of heartbreak and what moves us, and we have to let ourselves be heartbroken. We have to let ourselves be affected deeply by the injustice in the world and weep over it, be angry about it. And so I share in the book, I think it was a gift from God that I was raised in this beautiful family of eight kids. And I was also just very sensitive growing up, sensitive to people's feelings, just feeling things deeply myself. And from a young age, especially around the time I started to become aware of evil in the world, which, there's a point in every person's life when they suddenly have that moment, oh, there's injustice in the world. Maybe it's something they see in their own lives or someone else's life or something they learn about.
And when I started learning about just the atrocities done to children, particularly abortion, that there was a sort of deep sense of calling that I had to do something about it and it showed up in my dreams, or should I say my nightmares. I would have recurring dreams or nightmares about children in need and sometimes my own siblings, and I wanted to help, but I felt powerless to help them. And even to this day, I have these dreams at times and some people listen to that. Some of the nightmares can be very dark and they say, "oh, I'm so sorry you have those nightmares." And yes, it's no fun to have a nightmare, but I'm grateful in a sense because the experience of suffering or feeling, seeing the suffering of others can be a powerful force to get us to do something for them.
And so, in that sense, I'm grateful for the heartache I've experienced and it's nothing, my heartache compared to the pain a child goes through when they're the victim of abortion, to the pain and the regret a mother faces after an abortion. So this is my small part to enter into the fray and then use the conviction I have to fight for the lives of others.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah. Lila, in the opening chapters of your book, Fighting for Life, you also referenced a lot what happened in Germany under Hitler's rule and as a little girl, you and your mother, I think, were kind of reading books together and The Hiding Place, and a lot of C.S. Lewis works, et cetera, began to have an impression on you because you saw again, the injustice, the atrocity of what could happen over there and began to do a correlation as God began to unfold this narrative in your own life. And this calling as a girl to "step into the middle of something that was happening in our culture right now." Can you explain a little bit more about that?
Lila Rose: Sure. So I talk a lot about my childhood and just both the joys and some of the struggles, but one of the great gifts of being raised in my family was my parents focused on education and really love and service of others. And one of the things I did with my mom, as you mentioned, is this mother's book club where we would read these very powerful books every month with other mothers and daughters. And one of the books I read at an early age was The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, which you might be familiar with. It's a story of a small family, two sisters and their dad, Corrie, Betsy, and their father and their father's watch shop in Nazi-occupied Netherlands. And they're hiding Jews above the watch shop because they felt strongly. They weren't Jewish themselves, but they were Christians, and they said, we have to do something for are our brothers and sisters being treated maliciously, taken off to concentration camps and they suffer the ultimate penalty.
There's an informant. They get dragged off to a concentration camp themselves. They're tortured. They suffer horrific abuse and deprivation. Betsy, the one sister, dies because of the deprivation. Corrie almost dies. And that example of standing up when you don't have to, I mean, they didn't have to try to protect Jews and serve their neighbor in that way. They didn't have to risk themselves. They could have rationalized themselves out of taking action. I mean, they could have said, "oh, this is so, not just controversial, it's so dangerous. And maybe we won't actually help anybody in the end. We'd put them in more danger and maybe the Nazis, there's a war maybe they'll lose and we'll get our country back."
There's always a reason to not fight. There's always a reason to not sacrifice. And I think that's the state of American Christianity today is it's so easy to just be numb and just live a normal life that's not stepping into the battles that are playing out because it's easier. It's more comfortable and so having those heroes, having Corrie ten Boom as my hero as a little girl, gave me a vision for what it meant to actually love sacrificially. And even though I didn't do anything close to what she's done and did with her life in such tremendous service, it gave me this hope that I could give my life too in some way, and that I should at least try. And I think that's a tremendous blessing and gift and that's the power of a hero to inspire us. And that's why we need heroes to rouse us to action. And to give us moral clarity about what true love looks like.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You also reference Mother Teresa, her work on loving Jesus, total surrender, and more, you kept a picture of Mother Teresa in your bedroom. You referenced it this way. You said you "wanted to understand what real beauty looked like." Do you mind unfolding that for us too?
Lila Rose: Sure. So Mother Theresa also was a hero of mine and she had perfect moral clarity. I mean, that's also the gift of a hero. She called abortion "the greatest destroyer of peace in the world." She didn't call poverty that, she didn't call racism that, she didn't call sexism that, she went out and said that publicly to powerful nations and politicians. Abortion is the greatest destroyer, even though she was working in Calcutta, India with the poorest of the poor, it was abortion, the killing of the child in the womb. And she exuded beauty. She was sharing the love of Christ with those in most need and the moral clarity of Christ. And so when I learned about her and this little tiny nun in this little blue saree and there is this picture I found of her feet because they were very calloused and twisted.
She wore these simple sandals walking the filthy streets and slums of Calcutta, India. Her feet bore the brunt of that sort of exposure. And here I am a teen girl, very concerned about my appearance, also struggling with body image issues, and I talk in the book about some of my struggles, mental health struggles as a teen. And having this image of this woman who her beauty is radiant, but it's not a physical beauty by the world standards. Instead of coifed hair and pedicured feet, she is letting herself be just poured out for others. It gave me a vision again, of what true beauty was. And even though I didn't fully align myself to that, as a teen, because again, I had my issues I was wrestling with and it gave me a sense of hope. It gave me a, I guess, a Northern Star for what true beauty was. And for that I'm forever grateful to her.
Dr. Tim Clinton: The big lesson takeaway, heroism is grounded in self-sacrificing love. I wrote these notes down. Heroes offer up lives for others, even to the point of death. When I began to think about what God's doing in and through Live Action, the passion that drives you, Lila, and why millions of Americans, people around the globe, around the world are following and they're standing up for life and you see this stirring that's going in modern day culture. I'm going back and saying, I want to see that narrative. I want to see that story. And I love this in here. You wrote, "Inevitably we will emulate those we admire." And it's so true. Is that part of the challenge of the heart of fighting for life that you're trying to get through, that we need mentors. We need people to look up to, people to hold on to.
Lila Rose: Yes. You're exactly right. And I talk later in the book about specifically the importance of mentors and coaches and guides, because we're not meant to fight for life by ourselves. We're not meant to follow our calling, fight for causes on our own. I mean, sometimes we might feel alone, but there are people who want to help. And they're people who've gone before us and people God wants to give us, but we have to ask for it. And the hero that we have, and we all have heroes, whether we realize it or not. There's someone that is influencing us, maybe our romantic relationship. If you're listening, you're a younger person or you're even married and that's like your everything, the focus of all your heart's admiration, maybe it's some celebrity icon or it's some sort of career ambition you have that's sort of your focus in life and your biggest goal.
Who we look to is often who we emulate. So who's your ultimate hero? And I talk in the book, of course, I share a lot about my faith in the book. It's not just for faith-based people, but it's my life and I share how the ultimate hero is the perfect God who came to save us and who loves us. And the more we direct our worship and admiration there, and of course, to the people that are trying to also love and serve Him, then we can become more who we're meant to be.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You're listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Dr. Tim Clinton, your host today, our special guest is Lila Rose. She is the lady at the helm of Live Action, a massive ministry, pro-life ministry impacting millions around the globe, drawing attention, and by the way, championing this whole issue of life. And she has a brand-new book out called, Fighting for Life. I told my son, Lila, before I came in here to the interview, I said, "Zach, you're going to read the first six chapters of this book and memorize them in your heart because it's so moving and so motivating to engage culture for such a time as this."
Lila, I don't know if you sense it, but I sense there is a real stirring going on among people. I think people are tired. They're exhausted, yet they're yearning. They're crying out for something more. They're concerned about culture, they're concerned about our Christian values and more slipping away. And a lot of people say life is basically the issue, it's the one thing we've got to hold on tenaciously to. Do you believe that?
Lila Rose: Absolutely. As Mother Teresa said, "The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion." The first human right is life. And if we deprive life for the most vulnerable, what are we as a nation? Where's our justice? The greatest death toll globally and in the United States is the bloodshed of the pre-born. And until we reckon with that, we're not going to have a culture that is loving or moral or just, period. And it's not to say other causes don't matter, racial justice and serving the poor. I mean, these things ultimately are all connected, but if we don't have moral clarity about the prioritization here and the urgency here for the pro-life cause then we're not going to change our culture. But I am very hopeful like you, I mean, I love what you said that I think there's a quiet renewal happening. It's not getting headlines necessarily, but more people, I think, than ever are waking up.
I think they are seeing that there is a division of what kind of country are we going to be? And that's a good thing. Call evil, evil and right, right. What side are you going to stand on? There's no time to be on the sidelines anymore. And this doesn't mean we treat our neighbors poorly or that we are angry or bitter. This means we step out boldly in love and we fight for what's right. And we help educate others with the truth instead of keeping it to ourselves.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Lila, I know in the book, it's really an inspiration for people to take responsibility, to have a voice, to become a part of light in the midst of darkness. One of the chapters in your book, and this is encouraging everyone, you get very personal. You mentioned it earlier and it's called, "Know Your Worth." You talked about some mental health related themes, issues, depression, cutting, even thoughts of taking your life and more. Can you share a little bit about why you wanted people to see that part of you?
Lila Rose: Of course. And I got very personally, I shared about mental health struggles and body image disorder, and self-harm that I experienced as a teen and then ongoing issues even throughout my work of just working through anxiety and working through loneliness and some of these things that come with the mistakes I've made in my work. And the reason for that is because I don't want anyone to think that the work I've done or even the lessons I'm sharing, were done with this invincibility, as if I've got it all figured out and I don't have the struggles and you should just try to be like me. I'm trying to say, listen, we all have struggles. We all have wounds. We all have stuff in our childhoods and stuff in our personal lives that we're working through. But my message is this, there is healing that is possible, and there is freedom that is possible.
There are people that want to help you, and we cannot let our wounds, our struggles, our mistakes, hold us back from our calling. We have the choice to say, yes, I'm a wounded person. We all are by original sin. That's the state of mankind, but first of all, in Christ, there is freedom. And that is a powerful reality that we are called to, despite our struggles, step forward and grow. And in order to grow, we must love and love is service to others. Love is seeing the truth for what it is and being willing to stand for it. No matter what you've been through or are going through, you're qualified already because you are called. You are called to speak what you know to be true. You are called to go and serve and love others. And by doing so, you will become more the person you were created to be.
Dr. Tim Clinton: I know a lot of people struggle with meaning in life, Lila, they wonder whether or not they can be used by God and even maybe listening today. No one knows me. No one knows my name, but God does. And God has a calling. And in this chapter, I love how you referenced Victor Frankel's work on the psychology of meaning and what it meant to you. You close this way and I thought this was so powerful. "Seeing the need in the world around me, helped me take the pain of my own life and then be motivated by love or inspiration," which drives you, which I think drives Live Action.
Lila Rose: Yeah. And I think that's the beauty of the wound even. God even uses our pain, God does not waste our pain. There's nothing wasted with God. And you know, our worst moments are difficult moments. Our ongoing struggles can be used for good. They can teach us empathy and understanding. They can teach us forgiveness. They can teach us trust in God. They can teach us courage to get up again, even though we don't feel qualified or we're still struggling to get up again and try the next day. So, what a gift in a way, even the struggles are.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Lila, we're running out of time and I'm hoping that we can get another day out of you as we talk about the cause and what God's doing in and through Live Action and how we can all step up to the plate and engage. But let's close this way. You write a chapter called, "Let God Find You." God really is at work. He calls us. "No man cometh unto the father, save the spirit draw him or her." His callings are also His enablings. Close us out by challenging us with God is searching, He's looking for a man, for a woman who will step into this moment.
Lila Rose: No matter where you've been, where you are right now, as much as you're maybe desiring for more, you're desiring for joy, you're desiring for purpose. God wants that for you even more than you can imagine. And He loves you. You are his son or daughter, and He is searching for you. As a young girl, and even my early twenties, I wanted to know who is God. How do I find Him? What does it mean to even be a Christian? I was wrestling with faith and I was given this powerful understanding through friends and just other things of, as much as you are searching and seeking and hoping and looking and yearning, God is ultimately looking for you and He will find you. And He has all you ever need and desire. And He will give you all you ever need or desire. And He'll meet you where you're at in the day. His grace is sufficient for the day. So, I hope that that's encouraging to you and just know He sees you. He loves you. And He has a plan for your life. And part of that plan is stepping into the causes of the day. It'll look different for each of us, and making a difference in the world and the lives of the people around us.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Lila, thank you so much for this conversation. And we look forward to having you join us again tomorrow.
Roger Marsh: James 1:27 says "Religion that God, our father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress." God has called Christians to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the world. And to defend those who can't defend themselves. Pre-born babies truly are the most defenseless among us. We hope that Lila Rose's honesty and vulnerability today has opened some eyes to the plight of the pre-born and maybe inspired you to take action as well.
Now we'll continue our conversation with Lila Rose on tomorrow's edition of Family Talk. For now, if you want to learn more about her, Live Action and her new book, Fighting for Life, visit our broadcast page at DrJamesDobson.org. That's DrJamesDobson.org/broadcast. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks for bringing Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk into your home, into your car or wherever you listen to us. I'm Roger Marsh, have a blessed day and join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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