Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins recently participated in a spirited, sometimes chilling, debate with Bethesda, Maryland Pastor Ryan Phipps, which was hosted and moderated by podcaster Tim Pool, for his show “Culture War.”  

During the two-plus-hours conversation, Hawkins made the case for why stronger pro-life protections are needed, how the Constitution can and should protect preborn life, and why abortion is the human rights issue of our time. 

A select exchange from the interview is below: 

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW, HERE: Abortion Debate & The GOP Civil War Over A Federal Ban | The Culture War with Tim Pool  

Kristan Hawkins: So, going back to this prayer – this Huffington Post article that you did. You talk about women grieving miscarriages. Why would women grieve human DNA? What’s there to grieve if there’s nothing?  

Pastor Ryan Phipps: Because they wanted to have the baby and it didn’t make it!  

Hawkins: Was it alive? 

Phipps: I have no idea!  

Hawkins: Have you ever seen an ultrasound? 

Phipps: Let me get real personal with you for a second in the event that you think I am a baby killer. I have two wonderful children. We wanted to have three. Between the two children my wife miscarried on our toilet. I was out of my mind, I didn’t know what to do. I don’t remember reasoning it… I went into the kitchen and got a soup spoon. There’s a bloody mess in the toilet bowl. And I am trying to find the…. Miscarried pieces. I wasn’t attached to a person that existed. I never knew this person. I had no emotional connections with them, no conversations, never changed a diaper, etc. For me, personally, Ryan Phipps, there was not any God stuff going on – this is God’s image, this is a human who is hurting right now. No one was hurting except for me. I am not able to look at what happened there as this is a human being that is dying in front of me – it had already died inside.  

Hawkins: That’s a miscarriage, yeah. What were you trying to collect – because you said miscarried pieces.  

Phipps: Because I wasn’t able to find anything.  

Hawkins: Sometimes depending on the miscarriage… women find… 

Phipps: I am simply trying to say I think I am a good dad.  

Hawkins: I’m sure you are! 

Phipps: You’d have to ask my children. Look, I am not interested in killing babies. I am interested in the Federal Government not telling women what to do with their bodies. Not because of this instance alone, but once the government starts down the road what it can do with my body, I no longer have hope for the world my children grow up in.  

Hawkins: Don’t you think a million abortions a year necessitates we have this conversation? I met this man last week – I am still kind of traumatized by it. Tommy, at Florida International University. He drove four hours across the state of Florida. And my bodyguard had his hairs raised – he sees this gentleman coming barreling towards me.  

Tommy stopped in front of me and began bawling. He pulled out a crumpled picture of an ultrasound of his daughter. He and his girlfriend had named her Clementine. They were broken up, he had gone away for a week, and his girlfriend was pressured to have an abortion. She had an abortion at 20 weeks. There was a free abortion in Charity Hill in NJ; she gave the daughter’s body to science. And Tommy was distraught – 

Phipps: That was her choice – 

Hawkins: Tommy was distraught! Tommy was bawling for hours. He said “I had no say in this – this was my daughter and I couldn’t protect her. I called the abortion clinic every day trying to retrieve her body, because all I want is her body. I am buying a plot of land, and I want to bury my daughter. And I had no say. My daughter was killed and I had no say, her mother now regrets it, and I have no idea what to do.” 

Do you think there’s anything wrong? Do you think Tommy should have had any say about his daughter, who he had an ultrasound of, who was 20 weeks – so 1.5 weeks away from ‘viability.’ Do you think there was anything wrong with that situation, or do you think it was just choice? 

Phipps: I am not going to beat around the bush. I think that’s the way it’s supposed to work.   

SEE THE FULL STORY ABOUT TOMMY, WHICH KRISTAN SHARED ON THE PODCAST, BELOW: