JP Sears: Why I changed my mind about abortion

You’re reading Align’s pro-life issue: our look at some of the different people and perspectives within the anti-abortion movement. Please also see our dispatches from OneLife LA and theMarch for Life; the college student’s guide to preparing for the March for Life; interviews with comedian Nicholas De Santoand skyscraper-scaling activist Maison DesChamps; Robin Atkins on how to talk to pro-choice advocates; and Kevin Ryan on abortion’s brutal culling of people with Down syndrome.

JP Sears may have a huge following on the right, but he’s ready to poke fun at his fans and, by extension, himself.

“Nine months ago, I had a realization. I need to do more self-deprecating comedy about conservatives,” Sears tells Align. “I saw a lot of my material making fun of the left, the woke. I certainly still do that … but a lot of conservatives are taking themselves too seriously.”

The former self-help satirist says if that means some good-natured ribbing on both sides, so be it. The modern progressive likely isn’t secure in his or her beliefs, he argues.

“They ultimately feel afraid at some level. … It’s not a good place to be coming from,” he says. “The same is true of conservatives.”

Sears, renowned for blistering COVID-19 narratives and freedom-snuffing measures from Team Biden, won’t give the left much grace in the meantime.

“Every day there’s a new tidal wave of stories” to mock, he says, like a 50-year-old biological male swimming against 13-year-old girls.

“It’s terrible, but obviously for satire it makes finding subjects easy,” he says of today’s radical left. His approach to a society where yesterday’s Babylon Bee stories becomes tomorrow’s headlines? “Knowing the north star of truth … [and making] the sort of satire to help slice through the scar tissue and propaganda.”

That, he says, lets viewers draw their own conclusions.

He tackles tough subjects in a similar fashion. Take abortion, for example. Sears’ thinking on the matter shifted after the birth of his first child.

His 2023 video on the subject finds the funnyman, wearing a “Fetal Lives Matter” shirt, explaining that trajectory as well as his nuanced take on its legality. He once embraced what he now calls the “propaganda” on the matter generated by the left.

Abortion is neither “empowering” nor a “virtue,” he argues.

Now, he says abortions are “evil” but should be legal for the first couple of months of conception, citing the potential for further erosion of freedom should the government step in at that point in the pregnancy to protect the child.

“I don’t know if I’m right with this part of my thinking. I just know it’s what I’m thinking at the moment,” he confesses in the clip.

“Abortion,” he tells Align, “is one of the most unfunny topics out there.” The trick is to examine the issue and see where humor can be applied, often on the edges of the discussion to “bring some levity to a relatively heavy topic.”

That, he adds, can lower the audience’s guard and let them examine a subject in a fresh and revelatory way.

It’s also how he mostly dodges YouTube’s draconian censors. The video platform often punishes non-leftist thinking on the trans debate, the 2020 presidential election, and more. Sears says his approach to radioactive topics often skirts said censors. It’s also when minds can be opened.

“When someone’s hearing that wave of information for the first time, it’s very easy to be defensive,” he says. “The language of comedy comes across not as preachy but as playful. … The ego isn’t as guarded or defensive as it would be otherwise.”

Sears began his comedy career poking fun at spiritual gurus. His focus shifted at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Two weeks to slow the spread” morphed into lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and more.

“For the first time in my lifetime, I saw freedoms being eroded,” he says. “I saw where the freedom erosion could go if we allow it.”

Sears skewers what Elon Musk dubbed the “woke mind virus” early and often, but he sees signs of woke’s retreat. And he credits folks like Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, and Canadian professor Jordan Peterson for that hope.

“[Rogan] is one of the most powerful men in America. … He’s not buying into the woke culture and is much more on the side of common sense,” he says of the Spotify superstar. “Chappelle says it like he sees it.”

As for Sears, he’ll keep holding the left honest and leave the “clapter” to late-night comedians.

“It’s easy to be in an echo chamber and say things I know the audience will agree with,” he said. “That’s fine and dandy. I try my best to be true to comedy. Genuine laughter helps us move beyond limitations of thinking, to see through the deceptions that are there.”

Editor's note: This article originally carried an incorrect byline. It was written by Christian Toto, not Matt Himes.