The Spiritual Condition of America, Politics, Culture, and Current Events Analyzed Through the Lens of Scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. Welcome to the program. Alex McFarland's here. We've got a great show today.
We're going to be talking about. One of the most important topics for a lot of reasons. This is This is the issue, folks, and it is the issue of human life, the sanctity of life. And if you've listened much to my content, you know that I am a passionate advocate for an accurate, consistent, Handling of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees to all people the right to life.
Whenever I speak at universities periodically, if I elucidate the pro-life position, students and faculty will push back and they'll say, Don't impose your Christianity on me.
Now, my belief in God's word and my Christian position definitely comports with the pro-life position, but you can argue the pro-life position based on the U.S. Constitution. And even John F. Kennedy, in his 1961 inauguration, JFK said that the role of government is not to give you rights, but to guard the rights that you have from God. And that's one of the unique things about America is that the American government presupposes you have inalienable rights, among them the right to life.
You know, when Kamala Harris was running for president and she did not Win, thank God, but she would repeatedly misquote the Declaration of Independence and she would say, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But liberty, And the pursuit of happiness means nothing if they're not first predicated on life. If you're not alive, you can't experience freedom or self-determination or the pursuit of happiness.
Well, with all of that said, and the value of human life being so sacred, I'm very honored, very honored to meet Stephanie Laboulier. And she is the leader behind a film that I want you to be familiar with, See My Voice, and the website S-E-E-M-Y-V-O-I-C-E CMYVoice.com. A lot to learn about this incredibly innovative work that is being led by Stephanie LeBoulier. She's our guest today. Stephanie, thank you for making time to be with us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, you you are the writer, the co-producer of the Dear Mommy film, and leading what is a vital work, the message of life, to more and more audiences. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how your journey has brought you to this point that you're now a filmmaker with a message. Yeah, so I've been married for 18 years to my husband JJ, and we have four children. And about three years ago, I really just felt the Lord starting to break my heart appropriately for the issue of life in the womb being lost. And it wasn't just an ideology, it began to be a passion that I was willing to be uncomfortable.
I was willing to do things I was not previously willing to do. I don't like to stir the pot. I don't like to rock the boat, but it began to be such a passion inside of me that I was willing to get uncomfortable. I'd always felt a deep compassion and empathy for women who had walked through. Motherhood as single mothers.
And my husband and I had always strived to care for them and make sure they felt supported in the ways that they needed to. But it shifted to also caring for the children that were unborn and they were not given the chance to live. And from there, we just began to have conversations about what else we could do besides just supporting mothers to really make a difference and shift minds and hearts because we watched a lot of people's minds and hearts, especially over COVID. There was a lot of social media interaction where it was really excellently made content, but it was full of lies. And I saw a lot of people's minds and hearts changing.
And my husband and I really started talking what could we do to shift minds and hearts back towards truth And help people to value all life, whether they're wanted or unwanted. And, you know, whether a life appears to be unwanted by humans, it's obviously wanted by God. Because God is the giver of life. And we just aren't in a position to adjudicate what life is valuable and what life isn't valuable. All human life, because we're made in God's image and we are persons for whom Christ died, Jesus gave His life on the cross for our life and salvation.
Every human life is sacred, isn't it? It sure is. And I think that's what's been so interesting to see is that we can dismiss a life's value and erase its value merely on the basis of whether they were wanted or not. And we can fight to save them in one wing of the hospital At the same gestational stage, while destroying them in the other wing of the hospital. And the only difference between those two babies is whether they were wanted or not.
And to me, that just feels. Like absolute cruelty to deny someone their right to life, like you were discussing before. Merely on the basis of being wanted. Stephanie, that is so powerful. I've never thought about that.
Say that again, because that is profound. Heroically fighting to save a life in one end of the hospital. And at the same gestational period in the other end of the hospital, destroying life. Folks, let that sink in for a moment. Powerful.
Yeah, that's that's truly what we're doing. In in a lot of hospitals that perform abortions and also care for neonatal premature babies, we're doing both in the same hospital and there's no difference between the babies. In that hospital, it's just Yeah.
Well said.
Well said.
What is See My Voice? S-E-E, See My Voice. Explain the meaning behind that title, please. Yeah, so we want to make visual media that can change the mind because I've, you know, when you look through history, you really see that if you can use media and wield it well, you can really change culture and change minds. And there's something so powerful about creative storytelling, whether it's fictional storytelling based on the real ideas that have, you know, real experiences of people, or if it's just letting people tell their own stories, it's so powerful to tell your own story and to let that be your authority on a subject.
It's so fascinating to watch someone's mind change when they just hear a story. And so we started with this creative story of Dear Mommy, which is a short film where a child can, we imagine for 22 minutes, the child can speak to the mom and tell her about the life that's to come and the things he's going to do and just speak courage to her. But what we plan to do and are doing right now is we're also trying to bring to life the stories. The heroic stories of moms who have walked these journeys of unplanned pregnancies and let them tell their own stories and bring creative lens into it and allow that to help shift our culture to value all life, to see the potential of purpose for every person, whether they're planned or not. And that you can start to see that even if we didn't plan it, like you said, God planned it and has great things for them.
We've got to take a brief break. Alex McFarland here with Stephanie LeBoulier and the wonderful film See My Voice, the website seemyvoice.com. Stay tuned more about this vital topic of human life after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this.
Charlie Kirk is coming to the Grand Strand August 21. He's one of the world's most influential social media voices and one of the people most responsible for the resurgence of young people standing up for America, getting registered to vote, and learning about our Constitution. Hi, Alex McFarland here. You are invited to part three in our speaker series, Conversations That Matter, with Charlie Kirk, Thursday night, August 21, 7 p.m. at the Alabama Theater on Highway 17 in North Myrtle Beach.
For tickets, visit the Alabama Theater website at alabama-theater.com. Hear Charlie Kirk, August 21, and there will be open mic question and answer. For complete information on the speaker series, go to alexmacfarlan.com slash conversations. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarlane Show.
Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here. We're talking with Stephanie LeBoulier. And, Stephanie, for one thing, I want to commend you for the work that you're doing. And I want to encourage people to go to the website, cmyvoice.com.
And you've got a team there. I was looking at your website. You've got some impressive talent in your corner helping with your message. And I want to hear about that. But hey, let me throw something out there.
In the first segment, you were talking about a message and using film. and and world-class imagery to Inform and change people's minds. A colleague that I worked with was Ravi Zacharias. He was a Christian apologist. He died four or five years ago.
But Ravi, we took him to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and did the college circuit. And he was a Christian thinker. But he said, And the reason I'm sharing this is because this is important about using art and film. Ravi would say: this is a generation that thinks with their eyes. And their emotions.
And, you know, just talking and reasoning that's important. But imagery and art and film And speaking to people's emotions, we're in a culture where that is the way to influence people, isn't it? It sure is. And there's a lot of young people that that is their primary source of discerning truth. It's social media.
And so we need to be present in that space, bringing truth in creative ways with excellence that I think should outdo the secular world's creative endeavors because we have the spirit of the living God who created the earth indwelling within us. And so we should be doing everything to the top tier with most excellence. How long have you been working to build your production team, Stephanie? Just since I don't have a background in film, so I really had to lean on professionals in the industry.
So, as soon as I wrote the script, I began to try to seek out people who had the expertise in filmography and sound and in coloring of film.
So, just since I wrote the script, just a couple years ago.
Well, you know, having built a team and we're in the process all the time, you really do a lot of praying, don't you? Because I know that there's only so much you can do on your own, and it's important to have the right people around you. And I want to encourage people to go to the website, cmyvoice.com. It's spelled just like it sounds: S-E-E-C MyVoice.com. You've got a great team around you, I can tell.
But I want to hear about the story, the script. Can you lay that out for us? Yeah, so the script is all from the lens and perspective of the child in the womb. And, you know, a lot of times in the pro-life movement, we want to be a voice for the voiceless, but I I had this thought of what if a child could be its own voice? What if we gave him a moment to speak on behalf of himself?
And what would he say to the mom?
So it's a poetic letter. Um from the child to his mom. And he's just speaking courage over her, and then showing her snapshots of their life along the way, of him growing up, all the way from her pregnancy all the way through to his adulthood. And then the film pauses in the middle and shifts back to the beginning of her finding out she's pregnant. But then shows what the world and all those moments would look like without him, and how the world is missing this person God purposed to be here.
And it's little moments that we actually probably are experiencing all around us every day with all the lives that we've destroyed that had a purpose and a plan. And God wrote their life and their story, but we intentionally destroyed that. And so it's an imagination of it, but the reality is we're living that everywhere we go, you know, in the grocery store, in our kids' schools, there's kids missing that and people missing that we're supposed to do things. Exactly. Do you know what economists talk about that?
I mean, my goodness, since nineteen seventy three and Stephanie, this this issue has always been very, very important to me and my wife, but About five years ago on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, there was a pro-life gathering in the courtroom in Texas where the decision was made to remove legal protection for the unborn. And along the docket they lit I'm thinking it was nearly eighty candles, each candle representing a human life that's been taken by abortion since 1973. And I've got to tell you have you been to that courtroom, by the way? I haven't, no.
So that's where it was decided because it was in Dallas, Texas, that a woman, actually, a minister's daughter who was in law school. She wanted to get an abortion, and she found out that in that county she couldn't. And they said it, those who knew her said she was enraged, and she sued the district attorney Henry Wade. Because of her alleged right to an abortion that she couldn't get. And of course, it went to the U.S.
Supreme Court, and in 1973, in what case Came to be known as the Roe versus Wade decision. Very famously, legal protection was removed from the unborn. And what's interesting, folks, is that even my friend, the late atheist Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens was a famous atheist. I'm sorry, he was an atheist, but he was a pretty brilliant writer for Harper's and a number of magazines.
Even Christopher Hitchens became an ardent pro-lifer, much to the chagrin of many of his fellow secularists. But Hitchens said: if we have constitutionally protected right to life, we can't just arbitrarily remove that constitutional protection from a subset of the human race just because we want to. Because if we find it inconvenient or unwanted to legally protect the unborn, Who's to say that someday we'll find it inconvenient to legally protect the lives of someone in a coma? Or whatever. But anyway, Stephanie, I was in the Roe versus Wade courtroom to speak in front of hundreds of people on what is a human being.
And you look. An opposite The courtroom in a big 18 inches by about 3.5 feet long, huge brass plaque on the wall. It says, In God we trust. And I just thought. How tragically ironic that in this courtroom Where on the wall it says, In God we trust.
A legal decision was made that would cost the lives of like 80 million unborn Americans. We've got to take a break. Can you hang with us for a third segment? Yes, of course. Thank you.
Give us your website. And folks, you've got to see this incredibly powerful short film. But the website, Stephanie. Seemyvoice.com, S-E-E-M-Y-V-O-I-C-E dot com. Stay tuned, folks.
The Alex McFarlane Show is back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. Hi, Alex McFarland here. You know, I was at a college speaking, and I guess we ministers get too wordy.
Somebody said, Can you describe Christianity in only two words? And instantly, this came to me, and I said it: loving substitution. And students raised their hand. They said, What does that mean? Loving substitution.
Here's the thing: because Jesus Christ loves you, He was our substitute on Calvary's cross. The appropriate measure of God's wrath that you and I deserved was put onto Jesus. You don't have to die and suffer for your sins because He was the substitute who died for you.
So, if you call out to Christ, He will save you, He will forgive you. I urge you to do that today because Jesus Christ has a plan for your life, and it begins with you putting your faith in Him. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. Learn more about this at alexmacfarland.com.
Uh He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarlane Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here. We're going to continue our conversation with Stephanie Labouliere.
I want to remind everybody: please be in prayer for our big summer activities. Of course, we've got our seven summer biblical worldview camps and nearly 1,200 students in incredible camps like Montana, the Hudson River Valley, and upstate New Jersey, and we'll be in Georgia and Iowa. We're in Virginia. And let me encourage you, folks, we still could really use your help in underwriting the students. Our cost is somewhere between $300 and $400 per camper.
And yet, in 25 years, we have never, never, ever turned a teen away. Last summer, we had 168 teenagers pray to accept Christ and become a follower of Jesus, and we teach them. Biblical worldview, including the sacredness of human life. And we talk about what it means to be a citizen. And at a time, folks, just as I record this, I read that young adult males, nearly 20%, are exhibiting signs of clinical depression.
And there's a war on gender and masculinity. And so we're in a culture where. People of all ages, but even many, many young people, they need to understand their identity and who they are and what life's purpose is. And they are responding enthusiastically to the gospel.
So, folks, would you pray about partnering with us and helping us evangelize the lost and equip the saved? And then, finally, I will say that we have our summer speaker series, it's called Conversations That Matter. We just recently in Myrtle Beach, this is like for the adults, we had Dinesh D'Souza. People came from 10 states, all the way to the East Coast from as far away as Indiana. Because people want to know how to defend truth.
And then Charlie Kirk later on this summer, a lot going on. If you would, please go to alexmacfarland.com. The speaker series, Conversations That Matter. I'm on tour all summer long. I'll be at the Cedar Rapids Bible Conference in Iowa, Judson University, the Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center in Western North Carolina with Jay Warner Wallace.
A lot going on. Please pray. And for all who invest in the work that we're doing, I want to say a very, very sincere thank you. But I also want to appreciate our guest on this program, Stephanie Labouliere, the website seemyvoice.com. Stephanie, thank you for holding through this final segment.
But even more importantly, thank you for what you're doing to proclaim the message of life. Thank you. I really do appreciate you sharing your platform and your audience to help me share about this film and get it into a wider, broader audience.
Well, I've got to ask, where does one market a film like this? How are you promoting and marketing? Right now, we're using social media, so primarily Instagram and Facebook, and then it lives on YouTube, so it's free for the public, for anybody to go see. This particular short film, Dear Mommy, and it's on our See My Voice YouTube channel, so you can. View it there.
Anybody can watch it there, or you can see it on the website. But yeah, it's just primarily out there, and then it's just been word of mouth, and people who were. Generously, a part of making it, whether they were cast or volunteers, or we had an all-volunteer cast, but we also had a lot of volunteers helping us because we had a lot of kids involved in this filming process.
So, there's just a lot of people who touched it along the way and who've been helping to share it on their social media pages. Sure.
Well, yeah, I would love to see this really, really go viral. And the film is Dear Mommy. You can view it at seemyvoice.com. Folks, let me encourage you, please blow it up, share it. It is excellent.
And, Stephanie, please convey our regards and accolades to your crew and cast because I mean, it's as high quality as anything out there, broadcast quality. And I I've got to ask you. I mean, you probably collected a lot of special memories in the process of filming it. Tell us about the first day of filming. I mean, you wrote this script.
You've got your crew. You've got the plan. And day one, what was day one like as this begun to be filmed?
Well, for me, the most central part of the cast and crew was my prayer team. And we began praying a year before we even filmed a single thing, before we had a single professional, just that God would connect us, that God would bring this to life. And the night before we filmed, it was actually the little playground scene with the mom and the child was the first scene we filmed.
So we had a pretty large cast of extras. And we met in my home in this room that I'm in, and we just prayed over our director and myself and just every detail that you could think of. And to watch those prayers just pave the way like a red carpet for all of the details to sort out the night before, or that morning of a filming, there was a ton of rain. And it was supposed to be outdoors at 6 a.m. at a park with, I think it was about 20 children and parents.
And the park was drenched. And all the slides were wet, you know. And I just had this thought. Right as we were walking out of the garage, I said, No, I think I need to grab a bunch of towels because the park might be. Totally drenched.
And so I just grabbed every towel I could and we threw it in the car. And then the director had gotten there before me and he's like, I don't know if you already left, but can you please grab some towels? And I was like, I already did. I guess the Lord pulled me before you got to it.
So it was just really, really sweet and precious. And just full of joy and it just was a A really beautiful marker of how there would be obstacles the enemy might try to put in our way, but that the Lord just held us in a covering through the whole process and was there orchestrating all of it. From first day to uploading the film, how long did that take? Uh, about a year. Oh, wow, wow, wow.
What what was more time consuming, the filming or the editing? The filming took more time only because we had to fund and then film, fund and then film.
So it was a process of, you know, okay, we can film another scene, we can film another scene because we have the funding. And then the editing was. Several months of a process. Our director was our editor as well. And so his name is Brian Burford.
And he just did an incredible job. This was kind of his first solo project. And he's got a background in working at Coldwater Media, which is a local media company that works with a lot of Christian organizations. And so he had had a lot of experience, but this was his first solo project that we really collaborated together. And it was just really, really neat to see God bring two people who were really new at it and give us what we needed to be able to make it with excellence.
What's next? What's next for Dear Mommy? Yeah, so we're still praying and believing that this film gets used however the Lord wants to use it.
So we've had churches share it with their congregations, and that's been just really had amazing feedback from people who've been able to view it together with their churches. But then we're also in the process of filming and producing. Our See My Voice podcast, where we get to talk with moms and families who have walked these journeys, and you know, it plays out in a lot of different ways.
So, we just want to tell all the stories and let people see how God can redeem and restore anything. And then we're also making mini documentaries with those moms as well so that their stories can be told in a beautiful way and just really highlight their heroicism and their courage. And yeah, let them feel like they have a moment to have their voice and their story seen through media.
Well, you're doing a great work, and I know the Lord is going to use it in a great way. I know the Lord is using it. Stephanie LeBoullier, thank you for being with us. We're out of time right now, but folks, I want to encourage you, go to the website seemyvoice.com, pray about supporting and getting behind this. At the very least, lift them up in prayer and spread the word on your social media channels.
And in the meantime, folks, stay bold, stand strong for truth, and remember 1 Corinthians 15, 58. your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Alex McFarland ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmacfarland.com.
You may also reach us by calling 1-877-Yes, God, and the number one. That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarlane Show.
