Tag Archives: Pro-Abortion

Polemics

A secular case against legalized abortion

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Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old
Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old

Note: this post has a twin! Its companion post on a secular case against gay marriage is here.

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:

  1. The unborn is a living being with human DNA, and is therefore human.
  2. There is no morally-relevant difference between an unborn baby, and one already born.
  3. 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. Is there such a justification for abortion? One of the best known attempts to justify abortion 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.

The best book for beginners on the pro-life view is this book:

For those looking for advanced resources, Francis Beckwith, a professor at Baylor University, published the book Defending Life, with Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Learn about the pro-life case

And some posts motivating Christians and conservatives to take abortion seriously:

News

Pro-abortion vandals: destroying pro-life display was “free speech”

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Unborn baby scheming catching vandals in a foot race
Unborn baby scheming about catching vandals in a foot race

I see that Neil Simpson linked to this Life Site News article in his latest round-up.

Excerpt:

A group of youths arrested and charged with vandalizing a Kentucky pro-life campus display said that destroying the display was an expression of their “right to free speech.”

Pro-life leaders of Northern Right to Life at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) say they first set up the display on Monday morning. It consisted of tiny onesies hanging on a line with red “X” taped onto every fourth outfit to symbolize a life lost to abortion. The display included a sign explaining its significance and citing the Guttmacher Institute.

But after the display was torn down twice within the first two days, members of the pro-life group began taking night shifts to watch for the vandals. On Friday morning around 1am, they say they spotted four young men beginning to cut down the line and throwing the clothing, which was to be donated to needy local children, in the trash.

[…]Both Piron and the Kentucky Post report that the three suspects police caught – Travis Black, Steven White and Montez Jenkins Copeland – have been charged with Criminal Mischief.

“Though the vandals don’t think they deserve to be faced with consequences, we at NRTL believe that it’s important for people to understand that they cannot just rip down a display simply because they disagree with its message,” said Piron.

A fourth suspect who had turned himself in, Kyle Pickett, agreed with pro-lifers that they had a right to display the clothing as free speech – but justified the vandalism as equally protected.

“Tearing it down was expressing our right to free speech,” he said, according to the Post.

I think that the pro-life movement would do well to buckle down and learn how to defend the pro-life view with arguments and evidence. Because if undecided people have to decide between persuasion and violence, persuasion is going to win every time.

I recommend taking a look at Neil’s round-up. There were several good stories in there, but I just chose one to link to.

News

Scott Klusendorf will debate tonight at Bowling Green State University

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Scott Klusendorf, the top pro-life debater on planet Earth, will be facing James Croft in Bowling Green, OH on Thursday at 7 PM.

  • Where: 101 Olscamp Hall, Bowling Green State University
  • When: 7 p.m. Thursday
  • Speakers: Scott Klusendor and James Croft

Excerpt:

The debate was organized by Veritas, the Christian Catholic Student Life Group that normally hosts similar events, but its members realized that a debate featuring speakers for the other side as well would be more constructive, said Eric Bower, president of the Bowling Green Secular Society that is now co-hosting the event.

“We thought it would be an excellent opportunity for discussion,” Bower said. “Hopefully the atmosphere will lead to a uniting of the community over the idea of healthy debate and talking.”

The focus of the debate will be two professional speakers, one brought in by each group, who will discuss and answer questions about abortion, according to a press release emailed by Veritas.

The speaker for the abortion rights arguments will be James Croft, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who is the vice president of the Humanist Graduate Community at Harvard and elected Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

The speaker for the anti-abortion arguments will be Scott Klusendorf, the founder and president of the Life Training Institute in Atlanta, Ga. He is a graduate of UCLA who has debated or lectured to student groups at more than 70 colleges and universities around the nation. He is also the author of “The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture.”

You can see Scott Klusendorf in action in a previous debate against Nadine Strossen:

And you get the audio from that previous debate, too.

And you can get Scott Klusendorf’s book right here! I highly recommend it for ALL pro-lifers, from beginner to expert.