You Can Change Our Culture's Mind on Abortion

Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In
2012, over a million human lives were ended through abortion in the United
States, bringing the number of abortions up to 55 million since the Supreme
Court decision in 1973.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday—the Sunday closest to the January
22nd anniversary—was last weekend, and you may have heard your
pastor preach on intrinsic human value and the horror of abortion. Maybe you’ve
resolved to support pro-life organizations or individuals who you think are
making a significant difference. That’s valuable, but I don’t want you to think
that the fight is “out there” in the hands of some elite group of influencers
and policy makers. When our culture turns around on this issue, it will not be
mainly because of big-name activists. The change will occur because of small-scale
interactions, through millions of conversations where people like you convince
one person at a time to protect the weakest members of our human family.

Making the pro-life case is completely within your ability,
I promise you. You just need to arm yourself with some information, a game
plan, and some tools to help you get started. So I’ve put together a short list
of resources, chosen for their simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. There
are no textbooks in this list, and you don’t have to be a philosopher to
understand any of this material. There are many resources available that go
into greater depth, but I confined my list to a few essentials that cover the
basics and will effectively equip anyone wanting to enter into this fight for universal
human rights.

Pro-Life
Crash Course : This post gives an overview of how to argue for the pro-life
position and includes links to resources that can clarify the points further,
if you’d like to learn more. Familiarize yourself with the main points you’ll
need to cover. Pro-life arguments are simple—that is, you do not have to learn
heaps of information in order to address the most important question: what is
the unborn?


Pro-Life
101 : Now that you have the outline in mind, Scott Klusendorf fills in the
details in these CDs. The set also includes a debate (so you can hear how he
responds to objections) and a booklet, Pro-Life
101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively.


Tactics :
It doesn’t matter how much you know about abortion if you don’t have the
confidence to enter into conversations about controversial topics with people
you’d like to persuade. Greg Koukl’s Tactics material (available as a book,
CDs, MP3s, or DVD—whichever format works best with your learning style) will
teach you how to do this effectively, and it’s the most valuable material I’ve
ever encountered as an apologist. And again, the skills taught in Tactics can
be learned and used by anyone.


The
Unaborted Socrates : This book is short and brilliant. The best way to
describe it is a cross between Pro-Life 101 and Tactics (see above). See what
it looks like when you put the material from those two resources together, and learn
by example how to use what you learned in Pro-Life 101 in a persuasive,
non-threatening conversation. This book is the simple and powerful pro-life
arguments spoken with clarity through a fictional dialogue between Socrates, a
doctor, a philosopher, and a psychologist.


This Is Abortion : The
ancient Roman poet Horace said, "Less vividly is the mind stirred by what
finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty
eyes...." Abortion is mostly hidden from our eyes, and that makes it easy
to forget what we’re talking about—the deaths of young human beings. This video
takes the term “choice” out of the dark and truthfully shows us the victims of
abortion (but see the next link before you watch).


How
Should We Use Graphic Images? : The graphic images are powerful and painful.
If we’re going to respect the people we’re trying to persuade, there’s a right
way and a wrong way to introduce these images and the truths they reveal. This
short video of Scott Klusendorf serves as a good example of how to
compassionately prepare people for what they’re about to see. He also gives a
defense of using graphic pictures as a persuasive tool, citing an example of
how true, yet brutal, images helped to end human rights abuses in the past.

It’s up to you now. Won’t you join the fight?