Host Brendan O'Connell Interviews Life Matters Radio FounderJill Taylor about her experience with Pro Life Radio.
WBCA Podcasts
Life Matters
The following commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at BNNMedia.org. Hello. Welcome to Life Matters. I'm your host, Brendan O'Connell. Well, I often thought Life Matters TV is a good name, but I think today I've been wound up by Life Matters Radio, and we have the founder of Life Matters Radio and the principal host, Jill Taylor with us today. Well, welcome, Jill. Thank you very much. And it's Choose Life Radio. Oh. Program is Choose Life Radio. Oh, my apologies on that one. All right. Choose liferadio.com. Well, anyway, I was going to ask you, first of all, how did you get involved with the pro-life movement? Oh, great question. I had been a teacher for a number of years when we moved to Ohio from California. The standards were much higher for me to get into. I had so many courses I would have to take, and I just kept thinking, what in the world can I do? And when a friend of mine said, we need somebody to step in just for the interim because we lost our leader at the pregnancy center. Never heard about a pregnancy center. Never involved myself in that kind of ministry, and as soon as I got there, I fell in love with it. Of course. I was blown away, we were in a small upstairs unit of a two-story house. It was just crazy. And so within six months, we actually had an opportunity to have a place built by our board, and they built a beautiful facility. It's gorgeous, and it's right there in Canton, Ohio. And I was there for the total of 18 years serving again, and then, you know, then the fear of we won't be able to replace you came out in the board. And you know, when you're having a board alongside of you, you try to encourage them and tell them, don't worry, I'm blessed to be here. But there were a couple who thought, no, this isn't going to work much longer and said, we'd like to step you down and have you just do raising the money and we'll bring another person in. So the other person who came in wasn't really all thrilled with me. And within a year, I said, I'm leaving, I'm going to do something else. So I sat at home for two weeks, and my husband called, he was on a trip, he consults with people, and he was driving home. And I just burst into tears, and I said, I can't stay in this house every day. I've got to be doing something. And he suggested how about radio, and my very lovely response was, you're crazy. And then while he drove the rest of the way home, I thought about it. I have my father was a pastor on the radio, my uncle was a very famous pastor on the radio, which is what caused my husband to be interested in. And who was that, the famous pastor? Schuller, Schuller's, S-H-U-L-E-R. My grandfather was a big person in Los Angeles, had a huge... Ministry? Yeah. Church. Yes. Yeah. He was amazing. He fought the judge, actually. There was a judge that was trying to close them down, but no, he was an amazing man. And then my uncle Jack, he was involved in moving around and serving, and my husband, excuse me, my dad, was also a preacher because of that. It was just amazing. Wow. I loved it, and it was a wonderful life. And now I look here and I see all of these, well, CSN, the acronym CSN Radio Family, what does that stand for, CSN? I don't know. We are Choose Life Radio, C-L-R dot com, that's us. Okay. If you go to C-L, Choose Life, C-L-R-N, I see, it's a faith-based 501(c). Well, I was just reading the, we are part of the CSN Radio Family, and the number of... You're in a tremendous amount of locales and stations around the country. How did that... Yes, we are. So, your first guest that you had, do you have a studio that you go to, or is it out of your home, or how does that work? Well, that's a good question. It grew really fast. We had a board that was very excited about it, willing to invest in it. And then listeners began to pour in. And when that happened, we... At that time, we were in a radio station that wasn't a great one, and we ended up going to a wonderful studio. We love it right here in North Canton, and we have excellent care and people who are taking care of all the ums and whatever in the talk. It's wonderful. And I love just talking with people about life. So, we do two, maybe two interviews a week, and then sometimes we skip a week and we don't go at all, just because we get too far ahead, and I don't like to get too far ahead. Right. Right. Well, who are some of the luminaries you've had in the pro-life movement, or maybe a story or two of some of the guests that you've had that you might find quite interesting and enlightening as far as the general public is concerned? Well, I'd almost have to go to my list. Hold on, and I'll give you a good list of people that I have had call in. Hold on. Okay. I'm sorry. Oh, that's all right. You can get to choose live radio, and you can see them all, but I'm going to have to do it on my phone because I'm using my laptop here, so. Well, I know I did it, it took me quite a while. It took me about 20 or 30 minutes to get through some of the people that you've had on the phone, and on your radio show, I was quite amazed at everything. And while you're doing that, I see at some conservative conferences I go to, the Bot Radio Network, how much, how many people listen on that network would you say? Is that a pretty large one for you? It is a large one, and we had a person who was taking care of all of our stations that we were going to. He passed away two years ago. His wife has taken over. I don't get the kind of information that I used to get from him, and I really ought to bring my husband in. He's much more on the other side of the interviews. He's the one who knows. Let me just check and see if he'll come and sit with a little bit. Would you like that? Well, okay, along as it doesn't take too long. It's how hard, how? I need you. They'd like to talk about things that I can't bring up. Well, so I'll let him sit here. Well, certainly about some of the guests you've had, and what kind of guests are they? That's something that you would probably... Yeah. Well, sometimes, here we are, this is my husband Howard Taylor, looking good today. Hi, how you doing? Hi, I would dump a Brendan O'Connell, and I was just asking about some of these large networks like the bot radio network. What do they bring to the table as far as the number of listeners? How have they been beneficial to you or some of these other large networks? Well, it exposes us to a lot of stations with, dare I say, less effort on our part. If we were to try and put together 750 stations, Christian radio stations around the country, that would be no small feat. And also, it allows us by being on some major networks, if I can refer to on that way. It also allows us to get the best price possible by going with them. So, CSN, for example, Christian satellite, radio network. In the last two years, I picked up a number of new stations, and if I remember correctly, three of them were in New Zealand, and it doesn't matter so much to me if we're in New Zealand or not. That's not the point. But the idea of thinking, well, we'll just go get on a few stations here and a few stations there. It just didn't make much sense. And I don't know if you'll mention this to you, but we're very closely with a very strong Christian radio man by the name of Gary Meek, and Gary passed away almost two years ago now. I think the area understood Christian radio. He understood secular radio, for that matter, and it's found a lot of his career in that as well. So, the idea of getting on-bought with roughly 140-plus stations, and some of these others that not only have stations but also have losing the word, but repeaters is what I was looking for. So, we're on, for example, Cleveland Moody. Well, Cleveland Moody doesn't contain, isn't just Cleveland, or Northeast Ohio. It has five repeaters. It can be heard throughout the state, and it can be heard in Western Pennsylvania. Is the word repeater, is that another station, maybe a smaller station, or is that the number of times per week that the show is shown on that station? Well, that's a great question. It's a totally different question, however, and we negotiate that right up front. In our materials, we talk about being on Saturday and/or Sunday, and so on. Some stations, we are on Saturday and Sunday. Other stations were on Saturday only, other stations were on Sunday only. The Cleveland Moody, for example, I talked about. We're only on there on Sunday afternoons, I think, at six o'clock that we're on that station. And then, of course, that's six o'clock throughout the state, on all of the other stations that they own or the repeaters that they have. I see. And are you going to expand further, or is this enough? Well, you know, I bring up his name, knowing everybody recognizes him, and not everybody necessarily would be supportive of him, but Rush Limbaugh was only on 600 stations around the country. Wow. And they were the most powerful and meaningful stations, if I can see it that way, that they really were, especially for his conservative political message. So we're on 750, is there a magical number for us to probably not? I don't know that maybe if you were throwing darts at a board, maybe 600 would be a perfect number if you were in all the major networks that you really knew would work for you. Yeah. Right. So it's a great, a great question. And Joel alluded to the answer too, and that is that it's not only a matter of how far can you reach, but it's also a matter of what can you pay for to reach. The podcast world is a world of very little expense, the broadcast world is the world of a lot of expense. I see. Very interesting. Well, Howard, thank you very much for explaining that to me, and give an idea of how big your network is. It's very interesting. Thank you. Thank you. One other quick thought in that is that sometimes you look for, not sometimes, but in this kind of business in Christian radio, you look for what God directs you to. We had some very successful, meaningful relationships with people who listen to the one station we have that is conservative talk, but is not a Christian station. And we got a lot of people listening to it and getting back to us and sharing it with friends and relatives, and it's kind of surprised us in some ways. And so we look at that and we say, is God trying to tell us something here? Is there an opportunity to expand beyond what we've been doing and get into radio that's not just, not just Christian? And what market is that? Is that? Well, that would be a little more of the Rush Limbaugh kind of market. For example, the one station that we're on has, that is an AM FM station, which is private itself on being conservative talk, also hasn't had major conservative political pundits on it, you know, some of the entities and folks like that, because it becomes much more of a local opportunity, you're talking with a local person and you're interacting and you're talking about local issues and such, and the one station that we're on does provide that kind of input for us. Radio is an interesting medium in that oftentimes, and especially with an older generation, oftentimes people have the radio on all day long and we run into people and restaurants who say, oh, you're on this particular station, it's really interesting, I'll go back and listen more closely, I leave it on all day long, I didn't realize you were not, now we're only on for a half an hour on that station once a week, so it's understandable for some might miss us. And do you have advertisers on that radio station? No, we have no advertisers whatsoever, we are a 501(c)(3), I know what that is. And so, I'm sure you do, and so we are limited by the things that we could, that we can do that way. Okay. When we first launched Choose Life Radio, I went to Gary Meeks, again, a good friend that a person understands this, and I said, Gary, how do we do this? Do we launch a, do we establish simply a limited liability company and just go out there and begin to do this? And his sense to us was, if you want to administer in a Christian market, if you're not a non-profit yourself, they're not going to sell you airtime, but their benefit to do that, because they want to deal with ministries who are in the game to the same extent they are. Now, the legality of, could you do it otherwise? I'm not so sure, we just took his word as a gospel, so to speak, have worked it that way. I see. Thank you so much for explaining that, I appreciate it. And Jill, I was going to ask you, who are some of the guests that you've had that you think have some really heart-rendering tales or people of prominence, like- Yeah, I don't have a list in front of me, but there have been some who have been very good friends, some, they've become good friends. Ben Carson is one that I would be able to talk with him. I think Sam Brownback, who's been on this show, I know, I've seen him. He's a great Christian and has quite a story himself after being a one-term congressman where he had gotten cancer, some sort that has been cured. He's gone on to be a senator, replacing Bob Dole, who ran for president, and then governor. But I know he told me on the show that, you know, what are we going to do? Is it a human being or is it an object that's in the womb? That's with the, you know, what side are we going to be coming down on? And of course our side, it's a human being. Absolutely. And the other side is, I don't know what they're irrational, they don't, I call them easily bamboozled people. You know, one of the things that really concerns me is that when we allow people to make the statement that it's really not a child yet, it's in the womb. We can abort and it doesn't hurt anybody. That's not true. It's really a life. Life that's left alone, it will grow. Now, let's take that with elderly people, people who are old. Should we be ending their lives because their life isn't going to be as full on the end or end? No, we don't. We don't kill them before they die. I hope some, some, some permit it. Some permit it. Some ask for it. The reality is, no one has the right to say that child can't be born, especially when we have so many people who are willing and open to have adoption. We are part of that. We have adopted children as well as having our children. But adoption is a gift because you've got a child who needs parents and needs a family and all of a sudden they're, they're a part of you and pretty soon you forget that they're adopted. They're yours. Mm hmm. Yeah. One of the drawbacks of, but drawing me into the conversation is that I can appear to take it over and I don't want to do that, but while Ben Carson was, was a great interview and we've had other interviews with, with people of Rick Santorum, Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, who I believe still has a daughter with a trisomy 18, I believe it was, and she's into her 20s. We spoke with Governor Mike DeWine who did a decent interview, but he continued to work. You could hear him shuffling papers in the background during the interview and, and they're pretty well known individuals. But one of the things that I come back to, and one of those was Jarrell from Heartbeat International, the president there, just a wonderful friend in a terrific, the supporter of, of life and, and the list, you know, dare I say the list goes on, but what we have found is that the persons who perhaps tell the best stories, and that's really for the most part what Choose Life Radio is about, it's about, it's about individual stories. And some of those people who have the best stories are the people who literally live down the street. We have a friend who goes to a local Baptist church and, and, and she spent the time in the military. She was in the Air Force, she, she had about what alcohol is, she, she had an abortion, and she came to Christ. And when you listen to her story, somehow a lot of the other stories pale in relationship to what she's been through, and how she has come out the other side of it as, as a believer. So that's not, not to, to, to, to denigrate or lower somebody who's got a great name, and, and a different kind of story, but what we found is a lot of those really good stories are surprise stories. We get them on the radio, and they begin to talk about their lives. And, and those are the ones that often touch, touch the listener more than the ones that we think. Right. Right. I've had a lot of those people on myself, in our show here at Life Matters TV. So, well, the, I, I noticed one person, who's the fellow that you, you had on, that has the baby safe haven around the entire country, out of Texas? Yeah. Do you know him escaping me at the moment? Yeah. This is, this is, he's got the Justice Foundation, do you know the Justice Foundation? Yeah. Is this Parker? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I pulled, I pulled that one out of nowhere. Thank you. Yeah. Alan Parker, Alan Parker, Jr., I guess, is a great minds come together to, well, he, he gives a talk, and I've, I've heard it before, that then there never needs to be another abortion in this country, because you can just bring the baby to term and drop it off at a baby safe haven, whether it be like a fire station or wherever. In all 50 states, that as long as a woman were willing to bring the baby to birth, that's, that's all it's needed, and therefore, we don't need to have abortion anymore. But the one downside of that is you have to advertise that to let the people know, because not, not very many people in the public know about that. Yeah. That's right. And I'm sure there's even a stigma that I'm trying to remember the interview, but a stigma that goes along with that, too, if you're, if you're, if you're honest with your family and your friends, and you say, well, I thought you were pregnant, well, yes, that you haven't abortion. No, I gave, but you know, I just say it's a baby, you know, I put it in a safe box and they went to the hospital and somebody cared for it and then somebody adopted it. So doing, doing that, you know, carries all kinds of shame, shame that people try to put on you. That can be easily put on you if you're, if you're sensitive to the life issue, if you're not sensitive to the life issue, then it may make all the sense in the world to do something like that. And I would like to say, I really came into this because of working at a pregnancy center and they're everywhere. They're in every city, in every county, and it's worth looking for that if you're thinking about an abortion. At least get someone who can say, well, here's what we could do for you. And sometimes it's, I can't afford diapers, I can't afford, you know, formula, I can't do this. Okay, here are the things that we could do for you. We can provide diapers, we can provide formula, we can provide education. These centers do wonderful things and if, you know, if people would understand... And they don't look for recompense, and that doesn't cost anything. It's not, not like you have to pay to have the baby killed, which is what you have to do at, you know, places. Right. One of the things that really prompted this whole, and I wasn't here for the first part of the interview, but the whole issue with Choose Life Radio is that when Joe left that ministry, there was still a lot of passion there, and we looked for another avenue and radio seemed to be a good opportunity. And then of course, not only do we do broadcast, but all of our broadcasts become podcast and you can catch those all on Spotify or you can catch them actually by going to chooseliferadio.com and see the podcast and pull them up there. So it was a continuance of Jill's nearly 20 years as a director of the pregnancy center that caused this next opportunity to be one that we saw. Wow. Well, thank you, Jill and Howard, and thank you so much for coming on the show today. We really appreciate our time has come to an end, unfortunately, but you're doing great work and keep it up and I'll be in touch because I'm hoping to expand Life Matters TV beyond its current plan. Oh, thank you very much, and I invite anyone who's watching to come to chooseliferadio.com. Maybe you have a story. Yeah. Okay. Very well. Thank you. All right. All right. And folks, we hope you found today's show to be unique and formative, content-rich, truthful and thought-provoking. Thanks for watching. I'm Brandon O'Connell, your friend for life. The preceding commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at bnnmedia.org. [BLANK_AUDIO]