Trigger warning: this article contains mentions of suicide and rape.
Crystal Cove Auditorium had roughly 400 audience members for The Ultimate Abortion Debate: Destiny vs. Lila Rose on April 24. Outside, the line to enter stretched nearly the length of the Student Center Terrace.
The Ultimate Abortion Debate, run by pro-life club Anteaters For Life (AFL), was promoted as a live debate on abortion between Lila Rose and Destiny. Rose is the founder and president of Live Action, a non-profit anti-abortion organization seeking to end abortion nationwide and defund Planned Parenthood. Destiny is a live streamer and political commentator who advocates for liberal and social democratic policies.
Five minutes before the debate was set to start, a shout silenced the buzzing crowd.
“They don’t have Destiny. He’s not coming!” a student said as they pushed out of their seat. “It’s not a debate! So I’m leaving, bye!”
AFL President Valeria Laguna said in her opening speech that Destiny had run into “unforeseen circumstances,” but didn’t further clarify. Rose mentioned that he’d had flight issues.
Destiny himself was streaming at the time of the event, where he mentioned that the bridge to Miami was down to one lane.
“So my 25-minute drive was an hour and a half,” Destiny said nine minutes into the stream. “Which means not only did I miss my flight, the second flight I could’ve taken was also missed.”
Initially, AFL planned for both parties to present their opening statements before participating in a moderator-led discussion, where two moderators — one representing pro-life and the other pro-choice — would each pose two to three questions. Instead, both moderators questioned only Rose after her opening statement before Rose engaged in a Q&A session with audience members, with whom she encouraged debate.
At the beginning of her opening statement, Rose illustrated a brief sketch of Destiny’s views on abortion, summarizing that he would’ve argued that abortion remain legal until a child achieves consciousness, which she said Destiny defines as at around 20 weeks or so in utero.
Rose then began rebutting those claims.
“He actually has conceded before that human life does begin at conception, which is when a new human being comes into existence,” Rose said. “But he argues that a human being has no rights and no value until they develop what he considers a conscious experience. But these are false ideas.”
This isn’t the first time Destiny and Rose were set to debate. In June 2023, Destiny debated Rose and pro-life activist Kristan Hawkins on the Whatever Podcast. There, he mentioned that at around 20 to 24 weeks is when scientists say that the brain has all the parts necessary to begin communicating to have a conscious experience.
“Prior to that, the first trimester, that experience is not happening yet. So if you want to have an abortion, there is no ‘who’ that’s being harmed, there’s just a ‘what,’ which is whatever the body is up to that point,” Destiny said in the podcast.
New University reached out to Destiny for a comment on Rose’s rebuttals during the debate and has not received a response.
A fourth-year biochemistry student and a third-year genetics student, both of whom wished to remain anonymous, said that Rose misrepresented Destiny with her synopsis.
“She very much did, you know, misinterpret or misinform the audience on a lot of Destiny’s opinions, but I don’t think that’s out of any malice,” the biochemistry student told New University. “So, I mean, there’s obviously a counterweight that was missing here, but I mean it was perfectly fine.”
Q&A participants shared sentiments that Rose was misreporting Destiny’s stance. Some audience members more familiar with Destiny’s beliefs posed specific counterarguments that reframed Rose’s articulation of his stance.
One dialogue stemmed from a student who challenged her stance on refuting rape-related pregnancy abortions.
“I’m a pro-life,” the student said. “But I don’t think we need a bite a bullet that a rape victim needs to carry a baby to term.”
Rose disagreed.
“I think we’re buying into a false framework to say that, you know, the birth of that baby is such an evil thing, to have her carry that baby longer,” Rose said. “I think that that’s profoundly unfair to that baby.”
The student asked if Rose thought there was any other situation where one would have to endure pain to spare someone else.
“I mean, listen, life is not fair, right? Like, there’s a lot of bad things that happen, like rape, in this world,” Rose said. “If something horrible happens to you, that doesn’t give you license to then do something horrible to someone else, even if you’ve been so horribly impacted, right? So, I mean, I hear what you’re saying, but you know, you don’t, again, two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Rose mentioned a rape survivor she’d worked with, Lianna Rebolledo, who was raped at age 12 and attempted suicide as a result. For Rebolledo, having her baby was a silver lining.
“Now her story is not everyone else’s story, of course,” Rose said. “But I think there’s this strong narrative around rape and pregnancy that, oh, you just got to kill the baby to save the rape victim, and that’s just false.”
Laguna stated that AFL tried to get the word out on both ends. Before opening the event to all of UCI, the club’s board invited AFL members and the Catholic community. The event was promoted on Instagram, on flyers around campus and the Student Center Marquee.
Allene Vo, vice president of AFL and the pro-life moderator, said the debate was important because it got people to engage in discussion with those of different beliefs.
“I think that when we silence voices who disagree with us, that only causes further trouble, and it’s just, it’s not ideal,” Vo told New University. “In order to grow and learn and develop an intelligence and improve as human beings even, I think it’s absolutely necessary to engage in discourse and disagree with others.”
In a similar vein, the genetics student said that regardless of one’s stance, it’s important to hear both sides.
“You come to university to learn,” she told New University.
While the biochemistry student said his pro-choice views were strengthened by the debate due to holes in Rose’s reasoning, he agreed on the importance of listening to other perspectives.
“It’s very comfortable to just stay where you are, static. But you know, you pay this, you pay $40,000 to come and expand your brain,” he said. “You can’t just stay stagnant. You have to hear these things.”
Zoë Chang is a Features Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at zoeac@uci.edu.
Edited by Kaelyn Kwon