In the latest edition of Live Action’s “Exclusives” series, Virginia State Delegate and social media influencer Nick Freitas spoke about a number of issues with Live Action founder and president Lila Rose. Freitas is known for speaking with passion about marriage, his pro-life views, and his family.
Today, abortion is one of the most controversial issues in politics, but Freitas said he has always been pro-life… in part because his own mother got pregnant with him at a less-than-convenient time, while she was in college.
“And that kind of threw off everything that she had originally planned,” he said. “She was supposed to go on a scholarship to Columbia to learn Spanish. She was going through the nursing program. And then all of a sudden she had to leave all that. And she remained a nurse, became an RN, and she’s been working as a nurse ever since. In fact, she works in the OB now and has for about 30 years.”
His mother also serves as an empowering example that women don’t need to have abortions to be successful in their careers, though that mindset has become the cultural norm.
From military and marriage to making laws
Freitas told Rose he and his wife have been married for nearly 25 years. “We met in high school. I can take you back to the place I was sitting when she walked into the classroom freshman year,” he said. Shortly after high school, Freitas joined the military, and the two got married. Originally, Freitas was serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in the Army, and they were stationed in Hawaii. But when 9/11 happened, he decided to volunteer to serve with Special Forces.
“I loved Special Forces,” he said. “So I first went in infantry and I was a paratrooper, had an opportunity to go to ranger school, sniper school, some other things like that. The reason why I went over to Special Forces is because when I got stationed in Hawaii at the 25th Infantry Division, 9/11 took place, and I started watching as friends of mine that were deployed with Ranger Regiment lost their lives over in Afghanistan. And I kind of felt like I was sitting on the sidelines. I was also very impressed with the way that Army Special Forces, better known as Green Berets, conduct operations. It’s a lot of by, through, and with the local population, a lot of focus on unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, which I found to be fascinating work. And so I volunteered for that.”
But Freitas said he began getting frustrated with bureaucratic problems that effectively were tying the military’s hands, and he eventually left the military. Later, encouraged by friends to do so, he successfully ran for state office. And as some of his floor speeches went viral, he decided to participate more on social media.
“[My wife and I] just wanted to talk about things that we had learned, you know, getting married young, having kids, things that we valued, why we valued them,” he said. “And it resonated with people. And what we found was, is that if you could establish trust with people talking about issues that they cared about, then when it moved on to some of these more controversial issues, they were far more willing to give you an audience.”
Building a culture of life
Rose and Freitas also discussed the need to work on changing the culture to become more pro-life, a large part of which Freitas said involves being aware of who is behind the cultural battle.
“I think part of it is you need to look really hard at what your kids are being taught in the public school system. When 80% of the sex education has been approved by Planned Parenthood — keep in mind, Planned Parenthood doesn’t benefit from your kids making wise decisions about sex,” he said. “Planned Parenthood benefits, the abortion industry benefits, by your kids getting exposed to the idea of having sex as early as possible. That’s how they get into their clinics, right? So they have a profit incentive for that. So be very, very aware of what your kids are being taught through social emotional learning and through sex education and a public school system.”
Freitas also discussed marriage, advising young adults to rethink how they date other people.
“I think modern dating is really good if you want to get divorced one day,” he said. “I think it’s absolute crap if you actually want to have a healthy marriage… because we’re treating other people like they’re commodities. We’re treating their other people like they’re things that we try on for a little bit of time and hope it fits. And maybe if it does, great, and nobody should care about the 40 other people you tried on before they got there. Well, newsflash: people care.”
He added, “And unfortunately, there’s a movement that try to tell [us], well, it’s different for men. It may be different for men in the way that we process things differently from women. That doesn’t make it moral. It doesn’t make it right.”
