SPEAKER_01 0:00

Well, welcome to the ProLife Team Podcast. I'm Jacob and I'm here with Mauricio. And today we're going to get to hear his story along with information about live action and his connection there. So Mauricio, uh, would you share your backstory and yeah, tell us about how you're connected with the pro life world and work?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Mauricio Leoni, and uh I'm uh originally from uh Santiago, Chile, where I was born and uh lived until I was 25 years old. Then I graduated from college and moved to the United States, lived in Texas, graduated from the University of Texas San Antonio with a master's degree in uh public administration. And um yeah, since then it's it's it's been 20, 21 years living here in the United States, almost half of my life lived in in the US. And uh I became involved with the prolife movement uh because of two uh two main reasons, one emotional and one uh intellectual. So the emotional one is that my mom, you know, my mom got pregnant in very young life uh when she was 15 years old, and she she had me when she was in her sixteens. Yeah. So but the thing is that uh Chile at that time was very, very, very conservative in a in a negative way, and so it was very bad. It was very bad to have to get pregnant uh out of wedlock in a in a very conservative you know environment. So she she got pressured to have an abortion, even by her own family. But uh she decided that uh she wanted to keep uh the pregnancy and uh carry it to term. So I'm here because of her because of her, you know, uh willingness to have me for for her uh strength emotional and uh psychological strength to make that decision to make that decision. And uh so that's my my emotional reason why uh I'm pro-life and got involved in the pro-life moment. But the other one is more intellectual. So I when I when I was here in the United States getting my master's degree in public administration at the University of Texas in San Antonio, I was selected uh to participate in an academic program in Washington, DC, representing the University of Texas. So this this fellowship in public policy was a very, very reputable program run by the University of Texas. And they uh they uh it was very competitive. So they selected students from the entire University of Texas system, top students uh with master's degrees and were getting uh PhDs. So they part of the program was to live all together in in a house on Capitol Hill, right behind right behind the US Supreme Court. So we were 30 students living in one of those big houses behind the Supreme Court and uh and uh for three months. And we have to, you know, exchange ideas, and part of the problem was to socialize, to uh force all the students to socialize and to get to know each other. So in the beginning, all of them were very, very, very nice to me, you know. Uh this guy from Latin America, he has a cute accent, and uh it's fun to be with. So we're very nice until they realized that I was a Christian. You know, and uh before moving to the United States, I I attended Catholic University. I was at a Catholic university for seven years and graduated with a BA in history and a BA in political science. And and because of a Catholic environment, you know, I never experienced anything like discrimination against Christians. You know, it was a very nice environment, very open-minded and conservative and non-discriminatory against Christians. So when I was here at the Fellowship in Public Policy and organized put together by University of Texas, these students realized that I was I was a Christian and their attitude changed completely towards me. You know, in the beginning, as I said, they were very, very nice to me and uh they wanted to hang out with me, invited me to the parties and to uh do their their social activities. But then uh their attitude changed after I told them that I was a Christian, so they started to question my faith and asking me questions about why I was a Christian, why I believe in God and things like that. And at the time, I felt like I didn't have the tools to defend myself, you know. I didn't have the it wasn't part of my fault. So that led me into Christian apologetics and Christian philosophy. And through that, through studying Christian philosophy and Christian apologetics, I I came to the realization that the uh the this idea of the Imago Day, you know, the uh that every single human being life is sacred and uh and that the entire Western civilization was based on that idea. And uh that led me into pro-life work because I realized, oh man, this is this is a this is a core belief of Christianity. The magoty, that the idea that everyone is created in the image of God and that uh everyone is valuable and has intrinsic w worth. And that's why I started working for nonprofit organizations, mostly secular, because I wanted to, you know, to serve society and serve people in uh in difficult situations. But all of these studies about apologetics, Christian apologetics and Christian philosophy, Christian philosophy led me into putting put in my heart this desire to work and for for for the pro-life movement, work in the in the pro-life movement. And and that's the that's how I started. I had my personal, emotional connection with the pro-life movement, and then my intellectual reason that led me into Christian apologetics, and this idea that I needed to defend uh the sacredness, the sacredness of life is a whole hardcore, it's a core uh belief of Christianity, and also one of the most important ideas that allow Western civilization to prosper.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Awesome. Yeah, so it's a hard beginning, but yeah, it seems like it's led you to where you are now. And so where how would you describe your current connection with the pro-life work? What is your current pro-life effort and work encompass?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I have been in the pro-life movement for almost 15 years now, since I had those uh experiences, life experiences, and uh worked uh for almost 10 years uh at a pregnancy resource center, Obrea Medical Clinics, here in Southern California, and helped that uh to expand nationally and also secure major grants from the federal government under the first uh Trump administration. And then after working for uh Obrea Medical Clinics, Prolife, which is a network of ProLive Clinics, I uh move uh to live action and I have been uh with live action for almost five years, mostly doing uh operations. So I am responsible for some operations within the organization and also uh fundraising. I do a lot of uh fundraising with a focus on family foundations, public foundations, private foundations.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Awesome. So yeah, so this audience that's for this podcast is made up of pregnancy clinic leadership, um executive directors, pro-life leaders. So what yeah, so based on your experience with fundraising, what you know, what might you say to you know, fellow pro-life leaders who are often in need of looking for new funds? What you know, what would what would be your suggestion?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah, that's that's that's a very good question. Yeah, I know the struggle. It's very, very difficult to fundraise for pro-life activities because of the nature of what we do. You know, before working for pro-life or in the pro-life moment, I was doing fundraising for secular organizations and secular clinics, uh, federal federally qualified health clinics. You're you're probably familiar with them. They're all over the nation, like 3,000 federally qualified health clinics, mostly funded by the federal government, but they get a lot of private funding. So when I was working with them, it was, it was, it wasn't that difficult. It wasn't challenging to fundraise for them. Like one time I remember literally under the uh the Obama administration, HHS asked me to send them a one-page grant proposal, like one page. I sent it to them and they send us $150,000. And uh and uh I have many stories like that in which we we we worked very closely with public foundations here in California. For instance, the the California Endowment or the California Community Foundation. They were those organizations were willing to give massive amounts of funding: $300,000, $400,000, funding from HHS to support our activities. Our grants were $500,000, $700,000, $1 million. Very, very, very easy to do fundraising. But then when I moved to the ProLive Movement, I realized, oh man, that this is very, very, very, very hard, very difficult to fundraise for pro-life activities because when you get a $10,000 grant, that is a massive amount of money in the pro-life movement, like $15,000 grant, $25,000, or $50,000 or $100,000, that's a huge win. I mean, it's very difficult to obtain grants of that amount or that size in the pro-life movement because it's there are very there are very limited uh opportunities for that. But that doesn't mean that uh they don't exist. You just need to be very um, you know, you need to hang in there and uh be very consistent with your work and try to develop uh relationships, trying to identify is very important to use. There are several platforms out there, like the Catholic Funding Guide is one platform, or uh the Foundation Guide, or Grants Advance, which is another platform out there for um for finding identifying family foundations. So you just need to work with those uh platforms and then uh through those platforms identify those foundations, family foundations that could potentially align with the work that you're doing. And then you just need to, you know, reach out to them, reach out to them by sending them a letter or sending them a grant proposal and then following up and then work on developing a relationship with them.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Oh, that's good. Yeah, it's good to encourage people with that. I I appreciate you sharing on how you essentially encourage people to do that fundraising work and to be consistent. Tell us tell us about your the operation side of your work and involvement with live action. What does that encompass perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Yeah, for live action, uh it's not that difficult. I mean, I I manage real estate. We have an studio office in Southern California. It's uh confidential and not I I cannot uh give you the address because of all of the all of the threats that we get online. I mean, we we live action is a very well-known uh organization because of our social media work, so we uh are very careful about uh publishing or sharing information about our locations or offices. So that's why I'm unable to to share that information with you. But we have a studio office in South California and uh I manage that property. Yeah, and also yeah, and also I do a little bit of uh content, content creation or content uh I don't know how to say that, but I I my work because I'm the only uh Spanish speaker or international uh employee uh at live action, I am working on making our most impactful content available in the most spoken languages in the world. So we have we have a channel on YouTube, uh dedicated channel. It's called Live Action Global, in which we are uh uploading, we're still uploading, we have a lot a lot of content there uh in the most uh spoken language in the world, including Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, I mean you name it.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

It's uh Wow. That's a lot. Uh so what work do you do in the California space? Do you connect with what what groups do you work with and what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

You mean in terms of collaboration, partnerships?

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

We work uh we work very closely with uh with pregnancy resource centers uh locally. We share with them our resources. You know, we have Baby Olivia, which is a video, high-quality video that we have developed over the years. We have Baby Oliver, we have uh the Abortion Procedures uh series, or uh What is Abortion uh video series that is available for free online in English and in the most spoken languages in the world. And uh so we offer those, we make those available for uh pregnancy resource centers and prolife clinics here in in California. Some of them um are using it and are are like actively using those videos to counsel and educate patients, abortion-minded, abortion-vulnerable patients. So we have we have amazing stories from, for instance, a clinic in downtown LA, ProLife Pregnancy Resource Center in downtown LA, that uh they don't use, they don't have ultrasound in their operations. You know, most pregnancy resource centers, they have a pregnancy uh they use an ultrasound. Ultrasound is a key technology for helping women, abortion-minded women, abortion vulnerable women, women, to change their mind. You know, I remember when I ran clinics, prolife clinics here in Southern California, we had uh we had a success rate of 80%. 80% was our success rate, or eight out of ten women that went through our ultrasound service, they're changed their minds on their pregnancy and decided to keep their baby. But uh this clinic in in LA, in downtown LA, or pregnancy resource, it's not a clinic because they don't have an ultrasound machine. So they but they use our videos, they use our abortion procedures videos in which we have OBGYNs explaining each abortion procedure and how it works, you know, with graphic details. And they use these videos during the counseling process, and they have found that they are extremely effective and they have the same success rate as having an ultrasound machine. Eight or nine out of ten women that go through their counseling service and watch those videos, change their mind on abortion. And then they have this, you know, the the survey at the end of the service, and they ask them, hey, what changed your mind or what helped you decide for life? And they all say, the videos, the videos you show me were key to help me change my mind on abortion.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's a good question to ask. Um, you know, what caused what changed your mind, or what was one of the most important factors? That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, well, it's a standard procedure. It's a standard procedure in in uh pro life clinics or PRCs to ask um patients uh for their uh feedback regarding the service at the end.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

So where could someone see the baby Olivia or baby Oliver or the or the uh abortion procedures videos? Where could someone find that?

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, so baby Olivia, you can easily find uh those uh baby Olivia, baby uh Oliver, those are available uh very easily on, I mean you can find them very easily on YouTube. You just type Baby Olivia in the search bar tool, and uh you're gonna find it, find it very easily. They're very popular. Baby Livia has been seen by I think more than 70 million times. So it's Baby Olivia. We released Baby Livia in 2001, and then we released Baby Oliver in 2005. Baby Oliver is a little bit more sophisticated than Baby Olivia. So, but we already have, I think, almost 20 million views across platforms on Baby Oliver. And then abortion procedures is also available on YouTube. It's more difficult to find them, so you need to go to the live action channel on YouTube or to our website, liveaction.org abortion slash abortion procedures or what is abortion. But they are they're free, they're 100% free. We created them for anyone to be to be able to learn about abortion and uh human development in the womb. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's good to I'm glad that um it's always a good thing to share you know helpful tools and helpful resources with Prince Clinics, and so thank you so much for yeah doing that such a long time ago as well. So, one of the questions I'd like to ask on here is uh, where have you seen God's fingerprints in your story working, whether it be through a Bria or through live action, where have you seen God working as you've been in this space?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I have seen I have seen his uh mercy and his grace throughout my my career here in the prolife movement. As I said to you, I've been in the prolife movement for 15 years and almost 15 years, and uh have been extremely blessed by uh all of the things, all of the projects that I have been involved with, and also all of the doors uh that God has opened to support my work, but also support the organizations that I work for.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Awesome. Well can you can you tell us a story? Yeah, what's the story that comes to mind with maybe one with uh with some details or yeah, something that maybe happened recently, perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Well, a a very important, I mean, um a key story probably that I can share with you and your audience is that uh in my career in the pro-line movement, probably I probably raised over 20 million dollars in funding. Wow and yeah, and a a lot of that funding has come or came from from uh from many sources, but uh mostly from from the state of California. One time I was able to secure uh over $200,000 in funding from the state of California, you know. The state of California is probably one of the most abortion-driven states in the country, in the world. And uh many years ago, probably 10 years ago, I secured a grant, a $200,000 grant from the from the state of California. That's that's that's that's a very very interesting uh thing to share with your audience. You know, nothing is impossible. If you're doing the right thing, I mean, if you're doing uh good work, then you can get funding or doors are gonna open from the most unexpected places. So still California, yeah, they gave us $200,000 because at the time we were upgrading our electronic medical records and the state of California had a program for that that uh they were subsidizing. So I submitted an application and they approved my application and sent us a check for over $200,000, probably $300,000. I don't remember exactly because it was 10 years ago. Another one is yes, you know, under the Trump administration, during the first Trump administration, they changed HHS, uh changed the rules for uh organizations working with uh Title X. And uh I already knew Title X because, as I said to you, I worked for secular clinics before moving into the problem. So I was always tracking Title X. I knew about it. So for seven years before securing Title X, I already knew about Title X. So when uh when the Trump administration changed the rules and they opened the doors for pro-like organizations to apply to that funding, I uh submitted an application and uh it was a long, complicated, complex application, uh over 150 pages long application to the federal government uh to explain our project. So I submitted it like two minutes, two minutes before it was due. I yeah, because I worked I worked two months in writing, putting together 150 pages. And then uh the night before I couldn't sleep because I was working all night on getting that proposal ready. And uh just two minutes before it was due online uh on the their platform, I submitted it. And then after after one one month I submitted it, I received that award letter telling me that we were able to secure 5.1 million dollars in funding from HHS for our operations. And wow. That was uh that was that was a huge win for us, for for me, because that was the first time ever that we were able to defund Planned Parenthood from HHS uh Title X funding. Because that that funding was taken away from abortion uh businesses and Planned Parenthood and uh given to us. And wow. Yeah, and that was that was with Obrea, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

O'Bria there in California, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, Obrea in California. It was fifty years. I mean, Title Ten uh is a over fifty probably sixty years old program now. It was created in the seventies. So in in And fifty years of of history of the program, it was the first time a pro-life organization, and like explicitly pro-life organization, was able to secure funding from HHS to support our operations.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Wow. So so as someone who works for live action, how would you describe the work that Lila Rose has done and is doing?

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah. The work uh her work is is very impactful. Uh live action is extremely well known in the in the industry, in the pro-life moment, not just here nationally, but also internationally. So we have followers. Um currently we have uh nine million, all over nine million followers on uh social media across platforms, and our content has been seen over three billion times, not million, but billion times since uh live action started in 2008 as an organization. So uh it's it's it's it's very well known. And and the reason why I have been uh making our most impactful content available in different languages is because our followers from uh Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, even Asia, they they reach out to me asking for making our content available in their native language. So uh yeah, so that organization is very well known. Our content is very impactful, and uh and uh we're we're a small nonprofit organization where only, I mean, our annual budget is about 15 million dollars. You know, we are not even the the the largest in comparison to other uh pro-life organizations like the Human Collision, you know, the Human Coalition. I think their budget is about close to 40 million dollars, and probably it's one of the largest pro-life organizations in the country. At live action, we are only $50 million, and uh our impact is you know difficult to measure. Uh even Lila during um the President Trump's campaign, you know, she was invited to Washington, D.C. to have a private mini meeting with President Trump because he wanted to learn more about her position and wanted to learn more about live action's work.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Wow. So what are some of the most um high-performing or requested or desired videos that live action has posted on YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, so Baby Olivia is probably the most successful video. Baby Olivia that was released in 2001 is is a three minute, a little bit over three minutes uh long video that shows uh the development of a human, a baby in the womb from conception, from fertilization, you know. And uh that was released in 2001 and already has accomplished or achieved over 70 million views already. You know, and uh the impact has gone beyond views because uh baby Libya is now being used in uh seven states across the nation is required in seven states to be used in uh public schools to educate children about human development. And I would say that's that's that's the that that's the biggest impact we uh have accomplished with baby Olivia is the fact that public schools, you know, public schools in North Dakota, South Dakota, uh, Kansas, Indiana, and other states that uh I don't remember now, but are requiring Baby Olivia. There is a bill called the Baby Olivia Bill that uh these states pass to require public schools and and then their states to be uh to use to educate children about human development. And then the other one is uh Baby Oliver. Baby Oliver is a more uh sophisticated video. It's also human development uh video, but it's a little bit more sophisticated and uh includes more details because one of the criticisms we had from pro-choicers or pro-abortion people is that Baby Olivia was not uh 100% accurate or didn't have uh the most up-to-date scientific information. So that's why uh in 2005 we decided to release Baby Oliver, which is a little bit longer, five minutes long video, because it's more detailed and includes more uh details about human development in the womb from conception, from fertilization. And then the other ones, and then the other ones are the ones that uh I I mentioned to you abortion procedures or uh what is abortion video series. That uh those are four videos, you know, four videos, and uh they each explain one of the uh abortions that uh are being performed in the United States and uh across the world. And those videos are are are done or explained by different OBYNs that were former abortionists, and then they changed their minds and their hearts uh on the topic and decided to do those videos for for us for live action. Each video is probably three to four minutes long, and in each video, each one of those OBUNs, female, most most mostly female, they explain um a different abortion procedure. And as I and as I mentioned to you earlier, those videos are extremely uh impactful because you know most people don't know what an abortion is, and uh once they see it, once they see uh what uh an abortion entails, then they they they change their mind automatically.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Awesome. So tell us about live action's work on college campuses and universities. What does that what what has that looked like in over the years?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, so uh live action um actually we just started last year, I think, our uh college program. We didn't have a college university program before. We we always wanted to do it, but uh our focus has always been video creation, video production, and uh media. So we we felt like we were not doing enough for activism, activating people, activating um churches, and activating students and college campuses. So that's why last year we were more intentional about uh activating students. So we started in Southern California our college program. So we have now 15 college campuses across Southern California with which we worked very closely and uh we train the students and we give them the resources and the support they need to uh expand or educate other students about the the the issue of abortion.

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Awesome. So what are some you know be so beyond uh maybe you know promoting baby Oliver, baby Olivia, the the abortion procedure videos, how might what's another way in which a praxy clinic may connect or um partner with live action in some way? Is that are there any other ideas that you might, you know, they may be able yeah, a praxy clinic could come alongside live action or vice versa, live action might be able to come alongside a pragmacy clinic?

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah, that's a very good question. Well, in in the past, we have uh like uh sponsored uh pregnancy research centers, uh federations. I I don't remember uh the one here in in California, but uh the state coalition? The state coalition, so there is another one in Texas. So last last year, we sponsored the the Texas uh Alliance of Pregnancy Resource Centers, something like that, and we were we were there supporting them by by the sponsorship, but also by having access to pregnancy resource center directors because a lot of them uh know live action through our social media work, but they don't exactly know uh the abortion procedures videos or how they can use how they how they can implement those into their operations. So we we also partner with the uh Council for Life in Texas. You know, the Council for Life is a large pro-life organization in Dallas, in the Dallas for War area, uh fundraising to support uh the work of pregnancy resource centers. So um the coalition, the um the Council for Life, they uh awarded us uh several grants to support pregnancy resource centers and the Dallas forward area and uh introduce them to our resources. And and also we have run campaigns, you know, with uh Every Life in the past. Um Every Life is uh is a brand of uh diapers. You know, it's the old it's I think it's the only one pro-life uh company that uh produces diapers in in the country. Most diaper companies are pro-choice or support abortion, which is you know, it's crazy. But this uh we have partnered, we have run campaigns with our donors to purchase diapers and resources for babies and moms that we have put together and then distributed here in California and and across different states across the nation. We haven't done a campaign like that uh recently, but that's something that uh we could potentially do in the future and partner with different pregnancy resource centers. And another thing I would say is uh you know, live action is a marketing and media organization. So we are experts in the field, in the in the pro live movement regarding media and marketing. And one thing that I notice, I mean, by working, I that that's one of the things that I experienced working at Opry is the marketing media content challenge. A lot of pregnancy resource centers in the country and in California, they're struggling with ways to attract abortion-minded and abortion vulnerable women to their clinics. And uh I was thinking that I was thinking that maybe live action, maybe we can have a collaboration or partnership, or live action can produce content specifically for pregnancies or centers that uh could help them, you know, attract abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable women to their clinics.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Yeah, that's that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Uh so because as I said to you, uh, I when when I worked for Obrea, that was one of the biggest challenges challenges that we had was marketing and content creation. And then when we had the funding to hire marketing companies, they were those marketing companies companies were all uh like secular marketing companies that were not like familiar, they were not acquainted with pro life work. So we would spend a lot of resources and time on discovery, you know, because they had to learn what we did and why we did it and things like that. So that was a waste of time and a waste of resources for us at that time. So it would be different if an organization like Live Action would do that, you know, because we already know the market. We already know what is needed. We're not already fully acquainted with the pro-life issue and abortion topic here in the United States. So we it will be much easier for an organization like Live Action to create content on marketing tools or marketing resources for pregnancy resource centers.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Yeah, that's that's great. Um so I besides pro-life ribbon in this podcast, I also run iRapture.com and we work, we do a lot of content creation work, and we'll build what what I would uh coin is like national grade content that can be rebranded and used in uh for a Princy Clinic in order to keep it affordable but yet very high quality. And so I would, yeah, if you would like a way to you know have a method or an operational option to rebrand and and then get it applied to many centers, we would love to do that. We we have a a content catalog that's built to be reused regionally, and so we build things to be um so they can be repurposed and used again. And so it sounds like that's what you're asking for is a way of having really good high-quality content that can be rebranded and used. That would be something that we would love to partner with live action on if that would be an option. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Yeah, that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

So uh what areas do you know? Yeah, what what would be an area of interest to Francy Clinic leadership and pro-life leadership that live action is involved in that we haven't talked about as of yet?

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Yeah, an area of interest. It would be uh like church activation. I think that uh that's an area that uh live action has struggled with and uh and uh that is very important, you know. Uh I think that churches are for us, for pro-life organizations, churches are uh like the low-hanging fruit. You know, they're they're the easiest to to work with because they're pro-life, quote unquote pro-life, you know. So um, but churches are, you know, they have a lot of concerns regarding partnering with pro-life organizations, specifically with uh organizations that are very uh well-known, like live action. You know, we're we are an advocacy organization. So because we're we're advocating for um pro-life activities, then we are labeled as a political organization. And uh lot of churches don't want to partner with uh live action because of that quote-unquote political work. And uh, but pregnancy resource centers, you know, they get a lot of support from churches, you know, because pregnancy PRCs, uh clinic, product clinics are working in a community. They are inserted in a community and working very closely with uh churches. And so they get a lot of support from churches, they get diapers and uh, you know, and formula and resources for moms and uh funding to donors. So I think that that would be an area in which I think partnership collaboration between PRCs and uh live action will be very, very fruitful. Uh particularly now that uh live action uh we we're probably by the end of the year, we're gonna release a curriculum, church curriculum for for churches to learn more about, to get more educated on the pro-life topic. You know, I don't I don't know if you know, but uh Arizona Christian University, they do this uh survey, the Barna, I think it's called Varna Research Center, Barna Christian Center for Cultural Studies or something like that. So they do this survey every year or every couple of years, and they came out with uh this uh survey that said that only four out of ten uh evangelicals believe in this idea of the uh the human sanctity or the Imago Day, that every human has intrinsic value. So only four out of ten, you know, evangelicals know about that, and that is a core belief of Christianity. So live action, we believe that it's very important to get to work with churches, establish partnership with churches so we can uh educate Christians and Catholics about the importance of uh this doctrine, the Magode, so they can be activated.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Uh yeah, that's it seems like that's something that churches and Christian universities could, you know, add as a layer of such a such a high degree of importance as to the sanctity of life, the the value of life uh you know, based on reflecting being image bearers of God. That makes a lot of sense. So in your opinion, Ricio, what what is live action's greatest need? What would you say, you know, if you could based on your you know viewpoint, uh what you know, what what do you get what do you currently need the most, or what what's that what you would consider your greatest need?

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yeah, well, funding that's uh probably does I mean that's something that your audience struggles with. Funding is one of the largest needs because we know that our content is very impactful. We uh we know that uh our content uh can change minds and hearts on the topic of abortion. So the the the the issue for us is not creating impactful content because we have tested it, we have seen it, we know we have gotten feedback from pregnancy resource centers, from audience on YouTube, on Instagram, TikTok. We know that our impact our content is very impactful. So our our challenge is not creating impactful content. Our biggest challenge is distribution, distribution of our content. So um so it's a challenge is is uh one of the challenges is uh you know is uh is censorship. You know, this all of these large media companies uh on Instagram and Facebook, Meta and Google, all of them are constantly putting uh difficulties for our content to get easily distributed across platforms. Or they're censoring them, they're censoring our content in different ways. And uh the other challenge is is funding, as I said. Funding is probably the biggest challenge because funding is what determines how many people can view and access our content. You know, so if you want to have uh a lot of people watching your content or being exposed to our content, then you have to pay, you have to have the funding to pay for that, to market your content. And uh so if we if we had more funding, we will be uh we will be reaching probably every household in America. Uh, that's our vision. That's that that's Lila's vision, is to reach every single household in America with our um impactful content. To do that, we need we need the funding. We need the funding to pay for marketing.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

That's good. So being creative and innovative, how might a pregnancy clinic help with distribution um of this impactful content?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, so they can follow us on uh different social media platforms. We we have accounts on YouTube, live action on YouTube. We have live action global, which is which which is our international channel. So if they can follow us, that uh that's how that's very helpful because it helps with our you know algorithms. They can follow us on on Facebook, they can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, follow and share our content on different social media platforms. That is very helpful for our algorithms. They can introduce live action to their patients, use our content with their patients, uh, particularly the abortion procedures or what is abortion uh video series, it's very impactful. Very uh it's very those videos are high quality, very well done uh videos that uh they can implement, they can incorporate into their operations. It's a very easy solution. You know, instead of paying a ton of money for new ultrasound machines, I know that I know the the Knights of Columbus have been extremely generous with uh ultrasound machines. I think that uh we we pregnancy resource centers need to innovate and maybe use uh cheaper solutions or more easier solutions like abortion procedures, you know, like using uh videos instead of the ultrasound machine. You know, they would say an ultrasound machine is $40,000 and then you need to have a nurse, you know, and the nurse needs to be certified on ultrasound. You know, so instead of spending a ton of money on ultrasound machines, ultrasound certifications, nurses, you can potentially use, you know, patient advocates or someone volunteer or someone trained on education and and use our videos instead. You know. That's beautiful. Yeah, and also introduce introduce live action to to churches. I mean, uh there are as I said earlier, uh uh pregnancy resource centers are inserted in the community, are they part of that community and they have good close relationship with different churches. So if they can introduce live action to churches, that would be very, very helpful too.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah, I've been doing some research into virtual teams where a pregnancy clinic can support someone that's not near a in-person pregnancy clinic with an ultrasound service. And that's a really amazing idea, which is to be able to send someone footage of the ultrasound at certain time frames of you know of development. And in order to communicate that without having the in-person ultrasound service in some areas. And so that's yeah, that's that's a really that's amazing insight. So I appreciate you sharing that. That that's really timely and good.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Yeah, especially, especially now that the abortion pill is probably the the the main source of uh abortions in the country. I believe some estimates are between 60% to 80% of abortions are now through the abortion pill. So and it's very difficult to get people to our clinics, especially the ones that are taking the the pill, that they don't go to a clinic anymore. So uh

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Yeah, I've heard the the same percent here in the US, 63 to 80 percent. And I've heard even higher numbers in the UK the number of people taking the pill versus the surgical decision. I can I can send you the links uh to those videos to the description notes and into the YouTube description so people can use those and yeah, whatever you send me, I will be glad to add in there so people can see how to connect and share and so on. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Would you would you close out this podcast with uh a prayer, a prayer for the the work you know for the for those who are doing this work and just for Jesus' Yeah, for all of us to be really good serving the son of Jesus as we're trying to work and serving him with where we've been called together thank you so much for for uh everything you provide for for your praise for your leader for luminosity for the wonderful wonderful opportunity in the product moment and my friend activity. Thank you for for the uh for the activity. And open doors for him and uh his work so he can reach even more people. And I know the struggles, I know the challenges, I know the speed of the fact that they're they're they're enduring, they have to go through. So I pray that you left and we everything you have. We believe in you and powerful powerful God and knowing that, so you know everything and and uh you know what they're going through. You're also powerful and you created the entire universe and you created everything within we hope before you to pray for those resources, to pray for those directors and those uh ERC leaders or blessing for the life and uh for resources or everything they need to accomplish your will. You are the creator of life and you are uh very close. This work is very close to your heart, and so we pray that you bless every single one of those things, every single one of those directors with everything they need so they can accomplish the whole analogies of saving lives and saving saving moms from experiencing the atrocity of abortion. We pray all this in in in Jesus' name for his glory. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

There's a stranger in the fire shining brighter than the flames and I know he wasn't there before Well I heated up the fire and I threw them in the flames, but now here they come a walking out the door Oh most I got you I don't like and it looks just like myself, but I don't think I did a stall I do I think by the way.