Now, you may think that the view that the unborn deserve protection during pregnancy is something that you either take on faith or not. But I want to explain how you can make a case for the right to life of the unborn, just by using reason and evidence.
To defend the pro-life position, I think you need to sustain 3 arguments:
The unborn is a living being with human DNA, and is therefore human.
There is no morally-relevant difference between an unborn baby, and one already born.
None of the justifications given for terminating an unborn baby are morally adequate.
Now, the pro-abortion debater may object to point 1, perhaps by claiming that the unborn baby is either not living, or not human, or not distinct from the mother.
Defending point 1: Well, it is pretty obvious that the unborn child is not inanimate matter. It is definitely living and growing through all 9 months of pregnancy. (Click here for a video that shows what a baby looks like through all 9 months of pregnancy). Since it has human DNA, that makes it a human. And its DNA is different from either its mother or father, so it clearly not just a tissue growth of the father or the mother. More on this point at Christian Cadre, here. An unborn child cannot be the woman’s own body, because then the woman would have four arms, four legs, two heads, four eyes and two different DNA signatures. When you have two different human DNA signatures, you have two different humans.
Secondly, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the unborn that is not yet present or developed while it is still in the womb, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, it does not deserve the protection of the law.
Defending point 2: You need to show that the unborn are not different from the already-born in any meaningful way. The main differences between them are: size, level of development, environment and degree of dependence. Once these characteristics are identified, you can explain that none of these differences provide moral justification for terminating a life. For example, babies inside and outside the womb have the same value, because location does not change a human’s intrinsic value. More at Stand to Reason, here.
Additionally, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the already-born that is not yet present or developed in the unborn, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, that it does not deserve protection, (e.g. – sentience). Most of the these objections that you may encounter are refuted in this essay by Francis Beckwith. Usually these objections fall apart because they assume the thing they are trying to prove, namely, that the unborn deserves less protection than the already born.
Finally, the pro-abortion debater may conceded your points 1 and 2, and admit that the unborn is fully human. But they may then try to provide a moral justification for terminating the life of the unborn, regardless.
Defending point 3: I fully grant that it is sometimes justifiable to terminate an innocent human life, if there is a moral justification. One of the best known justifications is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “violinist” argument. This argument is summarized by Paul Manata, one of the experts over at Triablogue:
Briefly, this argument goes like this: Say a world-famous violinist developed a fatal kidney ailment and the Society of Music Lovers found that only you had the right blood-type to help. So, they therefore have you kidnapped and then attach you to the violinist’s circulatory system so that your kidneys can be used to extract the poison from his. To unplug yourself from the violinist would be to kill him; therefore, pro-lifers would say a person has to stay attached against her will to the violinist for 9 months. Thompson says that it would be morally virtuous to stay plugged-in. But she asks, “Do you have to?” She appeals to our intuitions and answers, “No.”
Manata then goes on to defeat Thomson’s proposal here, with a short, memorable illustration, which I highly recommend that you check out. More info on how to respond to similar arguments is here.
For those looking for advanced resources, Francis Beckwith, a professor at Baylor University, published the book Defending Life, with Cambridge University Press, 2007.
The Ohio state legislature today passed a state budget which includes multiple pro-life amendments ensuring the state is not involved in abortion funding with taxpayer money.
The state budget, House Bill 153, now advances to pro-life Governor John Kasich. Among other things, the state budget contains Ohio Right to Life amendments that will protect taxpayer dollars from paying for abortion.
The first amendment bans abortions from being performed in public hospitals. The second amendment prohibits abortion coverage in insurance plans of local public employees.
“These two pro-life amendments will ensure that Ohio taxpayer dollars are not funding abortion,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life. “It is crystal clear that a vast majority of Ohioans oppose all forms of taxpayer funding of abortion.”
Additional pro-life amendments were also included. One measure requires the Ohio Department of Health to apply for federal abstinence education grants to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies. The final pro-life amendment preserves the right of student groups to use and benefit from school funds and facilities, therefore protecting the rights of pro-life groups on college campuses.
“Abstinence education taught by our pro-life educators reduces teen pregnancy. These efforts have resulted in a decrease in teen abortions in Ohio, having a dramatic impact,” Gonidakis said.
“I am pleased that the Ohio House budget bill once again places a priority on abstinence education,” added Valerie Huber, Executive Director for the National Abstinence Education Association. “Passage of this measure assures that students in Ohio will again receive the benefits of this important risk avoidance message. We appreciate Ohio Right to Life’s support for this measure that returns a state priority on abstinence education in Ohio.”
House Bill 153 will be signed into law on June 30th by pro-life Governor John Kasich, who Ohio Right to Life fully expects to support each of these life-saving measures.
For conservatives, it’s a recession-era dream budget. “It balances the budget, preserves our tax cuts, and sets the stage for renewing the ability of Ohio to create jobs,” Ohio governor John Kasich tells National Review Online.
The $55.5 billion budget, which covers the next two fiscal years and fills an $8.6 billion shortfall, cuts $1.4 billion from Medicaid funding, sells five prisons to private operators, and slashes the money sent to local governments by 25 percent next year and an additional 25 percent in the following year. That last decision has proven to be controversial already, with critics charging that Kasich is passing the deficit problems to local governments, forcing them to raise taxes or severely restrict services. Kasich sees the cuts as an opportunity — and says it would be a “huge mistake” for local government to raise taxes, thus “providing disincentives for companies to locate in their communities.”
[…]On education, over the next two years, Kasich is expanding school choice by quadrupling the numbers of vouchers available and rescinding a statewide cap on charter schools. He is capping higher-education tuition hikes at 3.5 percent, requiring that all university professors teach an extra class, and asking universities to look into ways of offering three-year bachelor’s degrees.
On the jobs front, he’s adamant about the need to forgo tax hikes, even preserving an $800 million tax cut implemented in January. “States with lower levels of taxation have faster economic growth,” Kasich observes. He’s also setting aside $100 million — the profits from the state’s liquor monopoly — to fund JobsOhio, a new initiative dedicated to attracting and retaining businesses in Ohio. With an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent and a loss of over 600,000 jobs in the last decade, Ohio could use the boost.
Both the state house and senate are Republican-controlled, and Kasich is “very optimistic” that the budget will pass. “I’ve told [state lawmakers] that if they have some better policy ideas, that’s fine — but we will not negotiate the numbers. We will have a balanced budget, and we will preserve the tax cut,” he says.
[…]But if the budget succeeds in bringing about an economic resurgence, look for Kasich to reap the benefits. In a piece headlined “Kasich’s beliefs at heart of plan,” Columbus Dispatch writer Joe Hallett commented that the “plan is as much a social budget as a fiscal one, built on ideology as much as practicality,” and said that “Ohio, at least in modern times, has never seen a state budget like [this].”
Kasich is ready to be judged on the results. “Budgets are just a means to an end. They’re not an end in themselves,” he observes. “This budget can set the stage in our state for recovery.”
Some 1,100 Ohioans swarmed the grounds of the Statehouse Tuesday to demonstrate support for Gov. John Kasich’s plan to quadruple the number of school vouchers, even as overall aid for public schools is cut.
The governor’s $55.5 billion, two-year budget proposed last week also would lift the cap on the creation of charter schools, which operate with more regulatory freedom than their traditional public K-12 counterparts.
“School choice is not about doing away with public schools,” Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor told the crowd. “It’s about making them better. … Ohio’s future depends on our children being the best and the brightest in the world.”
Mr. Kasich’s spending plan would more than quad- ruple the number of vouchers to 60,000 by 2013 from roughly 14,000 now.
Suzanne Donahue of Toledo sends her 13 and 11-year-old daughters to St. Catherine of Siena School. She’s never received an Ohio EdChoice scholarship, and she’s not sure that her children would qualify under the proposed expansion. But she attended Tuesday’s rally to support that option for other children.
“We pay out of our pockets for it, and I vote for every tax situation that’s on the ballot for the kids because I hate to see the children suffer,” she said. “However, it would be nice to have some of those funds come to my own family. … I believe healthy competition will equal better schools and that better schools will survive.”
[…]The state runs two voucher programs — the statewide Ohio EdChoice Program, which caps the number of scholarships at 14,000, and a smaller, less generous program only for students in Cleveland city schools.
The EdChoice program targets students who attend a school that has been in academic emergency or watch for two out of the last three years. The grants are $4,250 for K-8 students and $5,000 for high school students, or the amount of the participating school’s tuition, whichever is less.
The budget also would lift the cap on how many bricks-and-mortar and on-line charter schools may be sponsored by one organization. The cap was imposed to slow the proliferation of such schools after a number of highly publicized failures. More than 300 charter schools in Ohio serve nearly 88,000 students.
Good news for fiscal and social conservatives. Well done, John Kasich!
I can’t possible cover everything, but I will make three arguments.
Same-sex marriage is bad for children
Same-sex marriage is bad for civil society and business
Same-sex marriage is bad for public health
Let’s look at these in order.
1. SSM is bad for children
Traditional marriage is beneficial for children for 4 reasons:
traditional marriages last longer than same-sex unions
traditional marriages are more peaceful than same-sex unions
traditional marriages offer children male and female influences
traditional marriages model life-long love between men and women
Space permits me to only discuss the first two, using this paper from the Family Research Council, which cites data from mainstream sources like the Department of Justice, peer-reviewed studies, etc.
That research paper compares same-sex couples and heterosexual married couples, in the following ways:
relationship duration
monogamy vs. promiscuity
relationship commitment
number of children being raised
health risks
rates of intimate partner violence
It turns out that same-sex unions are not as good for children as traditional marriage, on those measures.
Relationship duration
Claim: about 58% of traditional marriages last longer than 20 years.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2001)
Claim: about 5% of same-sex unions last longer than 20 years.
Source: 2003-2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census
Monogamy vs Promiscuity
Claim: 85% of married women and 75.5% of married men report being faithful to their spouses. For homosexual males, the number is 4.5%
Sources: Laumann, The Social Organization of Sexuality, 216; McWhirter and Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (1984): 252-253; Wiederman, “Extramarital Sex,” 170.
Rates of intimate partner violence
Married men and women experience significantly less intimate partner violence than do homosexual men and women.
Sources: “Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence,” U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Justice Programs: 30; “Intimate Partner Violence,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report:11.
Consider this article by Dr. Trayce Hansen about which family configuration is best for children. The title is “Same-Sex Marriage: Not in the Best Interest of Children”.
Excerpt:
Only mother-father families afford children the opportunity to develop relationships with a parent of the same, as well as the opposite sex. Relationships with both sexes early in life make it easier and more comfortable for a child to relate to both sexes later in life. Overall, having a relationship with both a male and female parent increases the likelihood that a child will have successful social and romantic relationships during his or her life.(5)
Moreover, existing research on children reared by homosexuals is not only scientifically flawed and extremely limited (6,7,8) but some of it actually indicates that those children are at increased risk for a variety of negative outcomes.(6) Other studies find that homosexually parented children are more likely to experiment sexually, experience sexual confusion, and engage in homosexual and bisexual behavior themselves.(5,6,9) And for those children who later engage in non-heterosexual behavior, extensive research reveals they are more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders, abuse alcohol and drugs, (10) attempt suicide, (11) experience domestic violence and sexual assault, (12) and are at increased risk for chronic diseases, AIDS, and shortened life spans.(13,14,15)
It shouldn’t be surprising that studies find children reared by homosexuals are more likely to engage in homosexual behavior themselves (16,9,17) since extensive worldwide research reveals homosexuality is primarily environmentally induced. Specifically, social and/or family factors, as well as permissive environments which affirm homosexuality, play major environmental roles in the development of homosexual behavior.(18,19,20,21)
Far from limiting the power of the state, your version of equality has become a tool for the hostile takeover of civil society by the state. Churches are already under attack for daring to dissent from the new state-imposed Orthodoxy that marriage is whatever the government says it is.7
Parents are losing the right to direct the education of their own children.8 Foster parents in the UK must submit to the state’s views about marriage.9 Reputable adoption agencies have been put out of business.
And the pettiness of some of the complaints brought by same sex couples is simply staggering. Christian bed and breakfast owners have been sued for not allowing unmarried couples to stay in double rooms. They would have gladly rented them separate rooms, but that was not good enough for the thought police.10 Same sex couples have brought legal complaints against wedding photographers, as if there were a constitutional right to have your picture taken by the person of your choice.11
Notice how same-sex marriage impacts businesses, clergy, non-profits, etc. and even leads to polygamy. Once you decide that marriage is not about putting guidelines around sex and producing and nurturing the next generation, but about letting consenting adults do whatever they want, then there are no rules.
The law is a great teacher, and same sex marriage will teach future generations that marriage is not about children but about coupling. When marriage becomes nothing more than coupling, fewer people will get married to have children.
So what? People will still have children, of course, but many more of them out-of wedlock. That’s a disaster for everyone. Children will be hurt because illegitimate parents (there are no illegitimate children)often never form a family, and those that “shack up” break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents.Society will be hurt because illegitimacy starts a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.
Are these just the hysterical cries of an alarmist? No. We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland,the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes,“When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.” But it’s not just Norway. Blankenhorn reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.
You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs taxpayers $112 billion per year!).
No-fault divorce laws began in one state, California, and then spread to rest of the country. Those liberalized divorce laws helped change our attitudes and behaviors about the permanence of marriage. There’s no question that liberalized marriage laws will help change our attitudes and behaviors about the purpose of marriage. The law is a great teacher, and if same-sex marriage advocates have their way, children will be expelled from the lesson on marriage.
So there are financial and social costs to the breakdown of marriage. The more government has to spend to deal with the problems SSM creates, the higher taxes will go, and the less money is left in the hands of working families to accomplish their own plans.
To be fair, I think that sex education and no-fault divorce are worse threats to marriage than same-sex marriage. I would like to see more research to persuade people that chastity before marriage is important, like this research , so that we could see our way clear to push for policies that encourage young people to wait longer before having sex. And I would like to see other measures taken to strengthen marriage from no-fault divorce, such as a shared parenting laws. But SSM is the current topic, so I’ll stick with that here.
3. SSM is bad for public health
Now we come to the sensitive part. We should not be encouraging SSM because it normalizes homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle is associated with harmful behaviors.
Students who report being gay or bisexual are more likely than heterosexual students to engage in unhealthy risk behaviors such as tobacco use, alcohol and other drug use, sexual risk behaviors, suicidal behaviors, and violence, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The study reported: “the prevalence among gay or lesbian students was higher than the prevalence among heterosexual students for a median of 63.8% of all the risk behaviors measured, and the prevalence among bisexual students was higher than the prevalence among heterosexual students for a median of 76.0% of all the risk behaviors measured.”
Specifically, gay or lesbian students had higher rates for seven of the 10 health risk categories (behaviors that contribute to violence, behaviors related to attempted suicide, tobacco use, alcohol use, other drug use, sexual behaviors, and weight management).
The study also found that only 1.3% of students self-identified as gay or lesbian at the eight sites where they were asked their “sexual identity.” A median of 3.7% said they were bisexual.
Researchers analyzed data from Youth Risk Behavior Surveys conducted during 2001–2009 in seven states and six large urban school districts. These sites collected data on high school students’ sexual identity (heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, or unsure), sex of sexual contacts (sexual contact with the opposite sex only, with the same sex only, or with both sexes), or both.
The study, “Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health Risk Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9–12 in Selected Sites—Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance, United States, 2001–2009,” was published as a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Surveillance Summary.
Non-heterosexual behavior leads to increased risk of psychological and physical disorders
Sadly, the research is also clear that individuals who adopt non-heterosexual lifestyles are more likely to suffer from a host of negative outcomes including psychiatric disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide attempts, domestic violence and sexual assault, and increased risk for chronic diseases, AIDS, and shortened lifespan. Schools should not affirm and thereby encourage young people to adopt lifestyles more likely to lead to such devastation. (To review these specific studies see references 5-10 below).
The footnotes she mentions are in the original article. That article also debunks the “gay gene” myth using identical twin studies, which show that only 10-11% of identical twins have the same sexual orientation.
Consider how society treats the practice of cigarette smoking. Certainly, we don’t want to coerce people into not smoking – we want them to have the choice. But we should definitely not lie to people about the health effects of smoking. It does no good to tell people that dangerous things are not really dangerous. I would rather hurt someone’s feelings gently by telling them the truth than see them suffer real harm after telling them lies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we have seen three reasons why we should not legalize same-sex marriage:
Same-sex marriage is bad for children
Same-sex marriage is bad for civil society and business
Same-sex marriage is bad for public health
Notice that there are no arguments in this post that require a religious worldview or belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.
WINTERY KNIGHT 