John Gerardi Guest Hosts - Wrapping up a Busy News Week!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But what I'm guessing is that you don't actually know
the on the ground reality of how the provision of
abortion in America has actually fundamentally changed and the push
to get President Trump to change it. To discuss this,
you have me on the show filling in for Trevor
Carey today. My name is John Girardi. I'm the executive

(00:20):
director at Right to Life of Central California. We're going
to get to I think I'm going to try to
discuss as best I can the Israeli air strikes against
Iran and then Iran's retaliation in the second half the show.
I am the host of the John Girardi Show Monday
through Friday six to seven pm right here on Power
Talk all Right. One of the things the many hats

(00:43):
I wear radio host, nonprofit director, other nonprofit development director
for the Obria Medical Clinics of Central California are pro
life nonprofit Obgyn Clinic Obria three six five dot org.
One of the other things I do is I write.
I write stuff for National Review, which is the big
national conservative publication, and I had a piece published by

(01:06):
them earlier this week this past Tuesday about the abortion
pill MIFA pristone and how it is basically making it
impossible to regulate abortion at the state level, which is
what overturning Roby Wade was supposed to have done. What
President Trump wants the situation to be. He wants abortion
to be regulated at the state level, and it can't

(01:27):
be because of the abortion pill, mifa pristone. So I
want to explain it to you because I think a
lot of pro lifers don't even really a lot of
people who are anti abortion don't really know this, don't
really understand this. And I think a lot of people
who are pro abortion also don't realize sort of the
risky way in which most legal abortion is now being provided.

(01:47):
So there are two ways now in America to do abortions.
You either do a surgery or you prescribe a drug.
A drug called MiFi pristone. Mifhi pristone was approved by
the FDA in two thousand in a rush process that
was basically it was only being rushed in order to

(02:09):
get it approved before George W. Bush won the two
thousand election. That was the only reason for the rush,
and it was approved under pretty restrictive guidelines that Barack
Obama and then Joe Biden completely loosened. What the drug
does is it inhibits this hormone called progesterone. You need

(02:29):
progesterone in order to keep the baby growing on the
inside wall of the uterus. A woman is prescribed to
miphipristone within the first ten weeks of her pregnancy and
the embryo or fetus. When mifhi pristone starts kicking in,
it cuts off progesterone. The baby detaches from the inside

(02:50):
of the uterine wall and dies. A woman then takes
a second drug called missaprostol to induce labor and expel
the baby from her body. If a pristone, it used
to be you could only prescribe it in the first
seven weeks of pregnancy with three doctors of appointments preliminary,
another appointment actually received the drug, and then a follow

(03:11):
up appointment. You couldn't pick it up at a major pharmacy.
You had to get it in a clinic. Barack Obama
changed the rules. He said, nope, you only need one
doctor's appointment, meaning no follow up care needed. We'll talk
about how dangerous that's become. And he said you could
take it for the first ten weeks of pregnancy really

(03:33):
loosen the safety precautions around it. Joe Biden loosened them
even further in twenty twenty one. He said, well, just
let them be shipped through the mail. You don't even
you can get the abortion pill prescribed to you with
no in person doctor visit whatsoever. Just have a telemedicine visit.

(03:53):
You say you're pregnant, you say yeah, it's less than
ten weeks, need an ultrasound to confirm gestational age, and
then a nurse practitioner in California or a doc can
prescribe you the abortion pill over a telemedicine visit, and
then have the abortion pill shipped to your house or

(04:15):
picked up at a major pharmacy. Since President Biden initiated
that change in twenty twenty one, no need for any
in person doctor visit, abortion pills shipped through the mail,
abortion pill picked up at major pharmacies. The number of
abortions in America skyrocketed from nine hundred thousand a year

(04:40):
in twenty twenty one to a million a year today.
The percentage of abortions done by the abortion pill rather
than through a surgery, which is generally a safer way
to do abortions also has massively increased. In twenty sixteen,
under Obama, about thirty nine percent of abortions were done

(05:02):
via the abortion pill pristone. Today sixty three percent. So
most of you when I say abortion, I think most
of you listening probably still think surgery. Right, show a hands,
show of hands. All of you driving in your cars,
raise your hand if you when I say abortion, you
think surgery. That is most of the time not the

(05:22):
case most of the time in America today sixty three
percent of the time at least, and I bet the
numbers higher. Now that was number from the last year
we have full stats for this, which I think was
twenty twenty three. The percentage of abortions that are done
via the abortion pill is over sixty percent. So the

(05:43):
vast majority of abortions are done via MIF pristone. Now,
the other part about abortion being prescribed through a pill,
affected via a pill is that pills are portable, pills
are shippable. You know, you can't ship a whole you know,

(06:03):
a doctor for performing a surgical abortion, you can't ship
that to someone. You can ship a pill. So what
has happened, Well, abortion pills are getting illegally shipped into
states where abortion is illegal, and safety wise, this is
really dangerous now. As I said, you can go to

(06:24):
my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny at
Fresno Johnny. This past Tuesday at a piece on this
published in by National Review, and here's some of the
points of me. First, there's a ton of evidence about
the abortion pill not being particularly safe. A study was

(06:45):
done earlier this year. This review of insurance claims of
over eight hundred and sixty thousand women who had mifipristone
abortions from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty three, and it
found that eleven percent of them had a serious complication
needed an emergency room visit, hemorrhaging, et cetera. The labeling
for mif for pristone, which was based on old studies

(07:07):
using more restrictive safety standards than are in effect today.
The labeling for mif for pristone, approved by the FDA,
says only zero point five percent of women have serious complications.
Another survey showed that something like eighty three percent of

(07:29):
MiFi pristone related emergency room complications are being miscoded as
miscarriage complications. This makes sense because there's evidence I found
a couple of different abortion providers as webs miph pristone.
You can just say that you that you're having a miscarriage.
You don't need to say that you're having an abortion.

(07:53):
So there's evidence that the huge majority of abortion related
complications are not being disclosed to emergency rooms, that it's
all being coded as miscarriage complications. Furthermore, there's also surveys
happening that all these claims that the abortion industry is making,

(08:19):
so one of the big things that's been repeated is
how safe the abortion pill is. This is the line
that the abortion industry has pushed really insistently, that the
abortion pill is so safe, it's incredibly safe, the rate
of complications is so low, and it led to these
comparisons between abortion and tile and all abortion safer than

(08:41):
taking a tile and all safer than ibuprofen, safer than penicillin,
safer than viagra. Another survey has been done showing these
claims are completely nonsense, first of all, basing it off
of one safety second, ignoring the fact that complications from

(09:02):
mifipristone are often very hard to detect and in some
cases have been covered up and it rests on a
bunch of apples to orange comparisons of different control groups,
different studies, et cetera. Now, what's happened is individual states

(09:24):
have outlawed abortion. Sure doctors can't prescribe mifipristone in let's
take Alabama. Alabama's effectively just banned abortion. Doctors in Alabama
can't prescribe miphi pristone for abortions. Doctors in Alabama can't
perform surgical abortions. But you know what can happen. I
have a website I could pull up right now. There
is this organization called aid Access. They're based in Austria.

(09:50):
They source abortion pills from India. I can literally pull
up on my computer right now, fill out a form,
and I can place an order for the abortion pill
to go to my home in Montgomery, Alabama in five days.
And what all the states at outlaw abortion that they
design their laws not to punish the women having abortions.

(10:11):
They designed their laws to punish doctors. But it leaves
this hole. Alabama can't prosecute a country, you know, a
company based in Austria. They can't prosecute a manufacturer of
the abortion pill that's based in India, or let's say
there are other sites that do this. A California based

(10:32):
company wants to ship abortion pills into Alabama. Well, guess what.
California as has New York AS has a bunch of
Blue states. They've set up what's called abortion shield laws
that basically say California law enforcement officials are not going
to cooperate in any way with Alabama law enforcement officials
in the enforcement of Alabama law relating to abortion. Now,

(10:52):
if you knocked over a liquor store in Alabama and
fled to California, yeah, California Highway Patrol would gladly cuff
you and get you sent back to Alabama so you
can answer to the Alabama authorities. They won't do that
for abortion related offenses or abortion related incidents, criminal or

(11:13):
civil actions. So what's to be done? Well, this is
what I'm saying. President Trump clearly, repeatedly has said he
doesn't want to do much with abortion. He doesn't want
it to be a federal problem. All of his actions
have been sort of disengaging the federal government from the

(11:34):
abortion question, not funding it for the military, not doing that.
He wants it to be regulated by the states. It
can't be regulated by the states right now because abortion
pills are flying every which way. This is the Trevor
Cherry Show on the Valley's Power Talk. I had a
piece published in National Review earlier this week. Hope you'll

(11:57):
check it out, give it a read, and you get
your first article for free, I think from National Review.
Follow me on Twitter, Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny
at Fresno Johnny, and you can find the article retweeted there.
I'm so basically, I'm trying to make this point that
the Trump administration has made a couple of commitments about

(12:18):
the abortion issue, that they're going to assess the current
safety regulations around the abortion pill. For those who don't know,
the abortion pill is the most common way that abortions
happen in America today. Sixty three percent of women who
have abortions do so through taking a drug called myth
for pristone, which basically within the first ten weeks of pregnancy,

(12:39):
it cuts off necessary hormones that result in the baby
detaching from the uterine wall dying. The woman takes a
second drug called miss Postal, which expels the baby. Sixty
three percent of abortions happen in that way in the
United States, and the problem is that it's through a pill. Well,

(13:00):
Biden changed the rules around the for pristone to allow
it to be prescribed through a telemedicine visit with a
doc or a nurse practitioner in California, So you have
a telemedicine visit with a nurse practitioner, you say, yeah,
I'm definitely ten weeks pregnant or under, even though there's
no ultrasound to check the stational age. The abortion pill

(13:22):
can then get mailed to your house or sent to
a major pharmacy for you to pick it up. You
never leave your house, you never talk to a doctor
in person, you don't have an ultrasound. So this leads
to all kinds of health risks. There's evidence coming out
that as many as eleven percent of women who have
pill abortions have some kind of serious adverse health event.

(13:43):
There's huge risks of someone might be having an ectopic
pregnancy and not know it without an ultrasound. There is
risk of hemorrhaging, risk of very serious infection that there's
all kinds of serious risks from the abortion pill. Especially
you know when it's taken in this way that's totally
divorced from any kind of clinical oversight. Now, how do

(14:04):
you stop it? Though? This is the problem is that
when a state outlaws abortion, guess what, people can get
the abortion pill shipped to them illegally, extremely easily. And
it's resulted in basically all these states that have outlawed
abortion since twenty twenty two, when Roebu Wade was overturned,
the numbers of abortions have basically stayed the same. So
what's there to be done. Well, there's this law in

(14:27):
the books called the Comstock Act, and basically one of
the provisions of the Comstock Act, it's got a lot
of problematic provisions that are sort of very vague, but
one of the provisions is quite clear, no shipping of
abortifacient materials, either by the Post Office or by common carriers. Now,
the Left has done this Jedi mind trick to convince

(14:49):
everybody that the Comstock Act can't be enforced because it's
an old law. It was passed under Ulysses S grant,
you can't enforce that. Will note that we are currently
governed by a constitution that was ratified in the seventeen eighties.
This Comstock Act was passed in the eighteen seventies, ninety
years later, and I think it's critically urgent to do

(15:14):
it because of Look, I get a lot of Republicans
who yell at me, why do you want the federal
government to restrict abortion? Don't you The states should just
do it. The states can't do it. That's what I'm saying.
Alabama has outlawed abortion. Anyone in Alabama can get an
abortion as easy as one, two three. They go on
a website, they put in their information, they pay some money,

(15:37):
and the abortion pill gets illegally shipped to their home.
It's happening. It's happening all the time in red states
that have outlawed abortion. We can't really stop it until
the Trump administration does two things. These are the two
things I recommend. First, revise the FDA guidance around the

(16:00):
abortion pill. Don't let it be prescribed with a telemedicine visit.
At the very least, return it to its pre Obama
regulations only for the first seven weeks of pregnancy and
with three doctor's appointments. Secondly, you have to enforce the

(16:25):
Comstock Act to stop illegal shipments of the abortion pill.
Whether that's an illegal shipment of the abortion pill going
from California to Texas or California Alabama, or an illegal
shipment coming from India. You've got to stop the illegal
interstate international shipment of abortion pills. Look, there was a

(16:47):
story recently about a guy who illegal, illegally ordered the
abortion pill, put the abortion pill into his daughter's drink
to cause her to miscarry. Like that. This is the
kind of thing that we're talking about with this unregulated
aspect of the abortion. Yes, it has to be stopped.

(17:12):
It has to be regulated. This is the tremor carry
show on the valleys. Our talk. Well, we got Israeli
strikes against Iran, and I am not a great foreign
policy expert, but I do want to talk about it.
So Trump came into office with this sort of mandate

(17:35):
for a certain vision of foreign policy, the foreign policy
vision he advocated for in his first term, no new wars,
but also within the context of the Middle East, a
kind of strategic alignment with Israel slash Saudi Arabia, Sunni

(17:56):
Arab world, the Sunni Arab world, and again against Iran
and its proxies, the Shiite world. More or less, and
that was a very decisive one side that Trump was
dedicated to in contrast to the prior Obama side. The

(18:17):
prior Obama side was, let's do a nuclear deal with Iran. Let's,
you know, if we can work with the Iranian government,
have them sign a nuclear deal just to make sure
that they're only going to use nukes for power plants
and stuff like that. Have them be part of the
Community of Nations. Maybe this can moderate things for the
Iranians and not result in them sponsoring so much terrorism

(18:41):
and not have them develop a bomb. And you know,
the Sunni Arabs are all ticked about this because Saudi
Arabia and Iran are sort of natural enemies. Saudi Arabia
is Sunni Muslim's seat of Sunni Muslim power. Iran is
the seat of Shiite Muslim power. They don't like each other.
They fight proxy wars against each other, and it's also

(19:06):
alienating to Israel, which Iran is kind of Israel's biggest threat.
Most of the home grown terrorism around the israelis Hamas.
Hezbollah is funded by the Iranians and they serve as
proxies for the Iranians, and then Iran itself has the

(19:26):
capacity to launch missile attacks against Israel. So the Obama
administration was, we're doing the Iran deal. We're engaging with Iran. Sorry,
Saudi Arabia, we know you're mad. Sorry Israel, we know
you're mad. Trump comes in, He switches that completely and says, Nope,

(19:46):
more good to be done by putting all of our
support with Israel and Saudi Arabia and against Iran, maximum
sanctions against the Iranians, and maximum press sure against the Iranians.
We cut all the sanctions we can to cut off
oil money from flowing into Iran. And that was really useful,

(20:09):
cut off this huge source of income to Iran, and
it led to repro schmamp between Israel and a bunch
of its Sunni Arab neighbors in ways that no one
ever thought was possible. The United Arab Emirates and a
bunch of other countries signed the Abraham Accords, as they

(20:31):
were called, peace deals between these countries and Israel, something
that it was thought would never happen as long as
the Palestinian issue continued to be a live problem. They
signed all these different Arab countries clearly with Saudi Arabia's blessing,
established diplomatic relationships with Israel, trade, international flights going back
and forth, exchange of embassies, which before it had been thought

(20:58):
was never going to happen. It happened with a couple
of countries. So Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East
was quite successful his first term, and that was the alignment.
It was with the Sunnies, with Saudi Arabia, and with
Israel against Iran. Now Trump comes in office and all

(21:22):
of a sudden, there's all this talk about an Iranian deal,
a Trump led Iranian deal, and Trump keeps telling the Iranians, look,
we want to moderate this. You know, we had four
years under Biden. Biden lifted all these sanctions against you,
wanted to come in and have you sign a deal,
and you didn't sign a deal. So now we don't
know what you've been doing. He lifted all these sanctions

(21:45):
which allowed you to get all this money which you
use to help fund, for example, the October seventh attacks,
and Trump, apparently, Trump says to them, I'm gonna give
you sixty days. I know Israel doesn't like what's going
on here is real things that you're getting close to
a nuke. They want to have air strikes. They want
to take out all your nukes. So let's come to

(22:09):
a deal. Give you sixty days. And everyone kind of
ignored the sixty day thing that Trump said, and apparently
on day sixty one, Trump it seems like what happened
is Trump didn't stop the Israelis. I think that's fair.
There's some reporting from some guys like s Abamari, who's

(22:31):
a Iranian American, not a Muslim Catholic convert actually, but
Iranian American for all that, who basically put it as
Trump sort of gave Netan Yahoo like a yellow light. Basically,
Trump would be supportive if the attacks went well and

(22:51):
have deniability if the attacks went badly, which frankly I
don't I don't know that. I criticized Trump for taking
that kind of a posture, and it seems like the
strikes went extremely well as far as success. As far
as the success, they took out a ton of the
Iranian military leadership, including according to some reports some of

(23:14):
the hardliners that were most resistant to the nuclear deal
that several of them are now dead. Now Iran has
now responded their attacks that are being reported in Israel
where at least one person has died, several people have
been injured, and so in short, you know, what do

(23:40):
I think of this? I continue to be nervous about
America's place in all of this involvement in all of this.
I understand the idea that it is in the national

(24:01):
interest to not let Iran get a nuke, all right,
That's the one thing in all of this that I
find convincing. If Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism,
gets a nuclear bomb, could they then somehow use that

(24:21):
bomb to get it to the United States, smuggle it
into the United States, to do something to harm the
United States, do something to harm our allies in Europe,
or something. I don't know. I can see that there's
a national interest in not letting Iran get a nuke,
but I remain somewhat. I don't like proxy wars. That's
my thing. I don't like proxy wars. I don't like

(24:45):
and what do I mean by proxy war? What is
a proxy war? Proxy war is when the United States
does not directly want to fight someone, so they give
another country a bunch of money to let them fight it.
We are fighting a proxy war against the Russians, right
now did you know that? Did you know that we
were fighting a proxy war? Did we have a vote
in Congress declaring a proxy war? No, we have a

(25:06):
vote on whether we're providing military funding to the Ukrainians.
What we voted on was a proxy war. We are
now in a proxy war against Russia, a nuclear power. Similarly,
we're kind of in a proxy war with Iran right now.

(25:29):
We've been in a proxy war against Hamas and the
Gaza Strip for a while, and we're in a proxy
war with Iran right now. Why Well, we're not fighting Iran,
but we gave the Israelis a whole bunch of weaponry.
Pretty much their whole military is supplied by us. We're
giving them tens of billions of dollars of stuff. It's

(25:54):
kind of our thing. And I'll just kind of say this,
there's a certain level at which yes, Islamic Looney Tunes
hate everybody in the West, would love to see everybody
in the West dead. But I think it is also
true that they are particularly motivated to hate the United States,

(26:17):
refer to the United States as the Great Satan, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Why because we are involving ourselves in proxy wars because
we fund Israel militarily. I'm not saying Israel doesn't have
a right to defend itself against just attacks. I don't
think it has carte blanche, but I think it has

(26:40):
the right to defend itself against unjust attacks. I think
it's allowed to have its foreign policy. What I don't
necessarily care for is the idea that we have to
be involved. There are so much in the Middle East

(27:01):
that I just feel like doesn't really concern us, that
doesn't necessarily impact our national security. Now, the big counter
example to that was nine to eleven. It did impact
our national security. But it's also a bit of a
chicken and egg thing. I mean, our national security gets
impacted by nine to eleven in part because of our

(27:22):
continuing involvement in the Middle East. I mean, what comes first,
chicken or the egg? Is it our involvement in the
Middle East that makes them want to attack us? Or
do the attack us, and then we get involved in
the Middle East? I don't know. My desire though, is
just to not be involved with this part of the world,

(27:44):
to let the people in that part of the world
handle their own problems, and for us to not get involved.
And maybe that's naive. Maybe you know, we are the
global superpower, and if we don't want a country like
Iran to have a nuclear war in one way or another,
we got to stop them. And if we do that
with some degree of separation of plausible deniability by giving

(28:06):
military funding to the Israelis and not telling them no
when they say, hey, we want to blow up runs
nuclear facilities, then I guess that's what you got to do.
But I don't love any of it. I really don't.
I hate all Middle Eastern foreign policy basically. I hate

(28:31):
the fact that our country is involved. I hate the
fact that we got involved in Iraq and Afghanistan to
the extent that we did. I hate the years and
years and years that we spent there. We should have
pulled out way sooner than we did. I hate everything
about the whole region. I hate the fact that we
involve ourselves in the day to day nitty gritty of

(28:53):
what Israel can and cannot do. I hate that we
have to be so involved because we gave them all
of our STAF So I feel a bit more ambivalent
about this whole thing, as you can tell, than I
think a lot of conservatives are I think a lot
of conservatives are all, yeah, sucking Iran, and I don't

(29:15):
like Iran at all. You know, I don't like Iran.
I think they're horrible. There's a bunch of murderous terrorists
supporting wack adoodle lunatics. I mean, we thought we were
bad with you know, eighty whatever year old Joe Biden
in charge? I mean, how old is Komene Comany is

(29:37):
eighty six? Biden's Biden's only eighty one? I had told
Komane was born in Oh wait, no, that's the old
KOMENI No, the current guy. How old is the current guy?
How old is the current I had tool of Iran?
Oh he's also eighty six. Oh so his dad was

(29:57):
eighty six year old when he died and this guy's
currently eighty s year old. Great, so yeah, I think
as Iran is making horrible decisions at the whims of
a crazy eighty six year old man who would be
fine with dying in a suicide attack because he knows
he'd get to or he thinks he'd get to hang

(30:18):
out with seventy virgins or something. That's the level of
insane insanity we're talking about. Here. This is the Trevor
Carry Show on the Valley's Power Talk. Thank you all
so much for listening. Always a blast. But don't worry,
the John Girardi show starts right after this, so I
have one more hour of me. So there you go.

(30:38):
My thanks to Trevor and Agent Squires and Ryan and
all the guys at Power Talk for all the help
and love as I stepped behind the big boy Mike
here on Power Talk. Just one fun, interesting little thing
to close up. Kind of a cool thing, especially for
people in the San Jaquein Valley. So many Armenians live
in the San Jwauquin Valley. I joke that I should

(30:59):
go by John Girardi because I talk about the Armenian
issues so much on my show and have been covering
so much about the invasion of Armenia the taking of
the Nicorno Karabak region by Azerbaijan. Pope Leo, the new
Pope of the Catholic Church, announced a lineup of new

(31:21):
saints that he is going to declare. Basically, the church
has this process called canonization, where someone led to kind
of extraordinary life, the church sort of investigates their life
and after a certain process of time investigating them might
declare that person to be a saint, basically a person
who we believe, we think to be in heaven and

(31:44):
whose life is one to be imitated, and whom we
ask for their prayers. And a new Catholic saint is
being declared. An Armenian Catholic bishop who was killed martyred

(32:05):
during the Armenian Genocide. Ignace Maloyan is his name, like
Ignatius Maloyan who died in nineteen fifteen, and on October
nineteenth Pope Leo I guess this was originally approved by
Pope Francis, but now Pope Leo's carrying it out is
going to canonize him. Bishop Ignas Shukraala Maloyan, the Armenian

(32:29):
Catholic Archbishop of Mardin, which is in modern day Turkey,
was considered one of the most significant figures of holiness
in the eyes of the Eastern Armenian Church. The prelate
was killed by Ottoman forces in Istanbul on June eleventh,
nineteen fifteen, during the Armenian Genocide. Along with other religious
figures such as the Cyro Catholic Bishop Flavian Michael Melchi,

(32:53):
who is also declared blessed. It's like one click below,
being a saint in the Catholic Church and killed together
with the Chaldean bishop Jacques Abraham on October on August
twenty eighth, nineteen fifteen, as well as Kapuchin brothers Leonard
Melk and Thomas Salah killed in nineteen fifteen. Nineteen seventeen,
also declared blessed by the Vatican. Maloyan was a priest

(33:15):
in Lebanon, where he was sent to a bunch of
different places that are hard to pronounce. In Lebanon, was
a monk and eventually was made a bishop and was
killed again by the Ottoman. So this is the really
cool thing, you know. The the Armenian genocide has been
so often ignored ignored in American foreign policy. The pole

(33:38):
foreign policy of Turkey has been basically to refuse to
acknowledge that the Armenian genocide ever happened and that they
did it. They assistant Tremor carry show London Valley's Power
Dog