Persuasive Pro Life: How to Talk about Our Culture's Toughest Issue

by Trent Horn

Most of us might choose to save the toddler over the embryos, because there are other relevant facts that are assumed, but not explicitly stated, about this case. For example, we may choose to save the two-year-old because we consider it worse for the toddler to painfully die in the fire than it would be for the five embryos to die painlessly. Or we might choose to save the toddler instead of the embryos because we know that frozen embryos have a poor chance of developing into adults. They might never be implanted, be killed in the de-thawing process, fail to implant, be naturally miscarried, or be reduced selectively later in the womb through abortion. It would be a waste to save the embryos that stand a high chance of dying before being born, and so saving the toddler would be a greater good.

With the increasing frequency of IVF births, there are many children and adults who now have the opportunity to look at a picture of an embryo in a petri dish and say, “That was me before they put me inside my mother.”

The bottom line is that even if we are unsure about when or if we should save certain humans in certain scenarios, that doesn’t change the central moral truth related to the issue of abortion: We should not directly kill innocent human beings simply because they are unwanted.

Our position is not that “women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions.” Instead it’s that “neither men nor women should be allowed to harm unborn children.” Men should not be allowed to abort children, and they should be charged with two criminal counts if they attack a pregnant woman. And neither should women be allowed to harm unborn children.

What if a critic says you are trying to take away women’s rights or you are “attacking women”? Redirect the conversation by saying that the issue of abortion affects both men and women and that you believe all individuals should have equal rights throughout their whole lives, including before birth. Always get back to the one question “What are the unborn?” as expediently as possible.

Feminists may respond by saying that banning abortion is an attack on women, because only women have abortions, and so this isn’t about equal rights. But that’s like saying a law against rape is an attack on men, because men commit the vast majority of rapes. Even though some feminists may want to deny it, men and women are biologically different, and that results in the law treating men and women not unequally but differently. Laws against abortion may prevent women from obtaining a certain surgery, but their primary pu...

Some pro-life advocates may find it useful to answer the charge of misogyny by claiming that feminists who support abortion are guilty of misopedia, or the hatred of children. How could someone not reach that conclusion, when feminists demand it be legal to kill unborn children? Feminists will probably respond that they don’t hate children; they just deny the unborn are children (or persons). But isn’t that still an attitude of...

For example, Feminists for Life is an organization dedicated to articulating the principles of feminism in defense of unborn children. Its motto, “Women deserve better than abortion,” is an excellent starting point for fruitful dialogue.

The pro-life movement is not about denying women any genuine rights. It is about securing equal rights for all human beings, and that includes all women, before and after they are born.

This person might be pro-choice in order to justify her past actions and mitigate any guilt she may still be feeling. Let her know that pro-life advocates believe all human beings have value and deserve to be treated with dignity. This includes not just unborn children but their mothers as well.

The fighter’s main concern: To sway the public against efforts to outlaw abortion by exposing how bad pro-life advocates are. Your objective: Show that the personal character of pro-life advocates is irrelevant to the question of whether abortion should be legal.

Is God pro-choice?

Goldberg is right that God gives human beings choices, but he also expects us to live with the consequences of our choices. In Deuteronomy 30:19, God tells the Israelites, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.” Jesus makes it clear that in the final judgment we will be judged based on the choices we made in life. Those who failed to love their brothers as they love themselves, Jesus says, “will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matt. 25:29).

Because God gave human beings free will does not mean he condones everything we choose to do. Is God pro-choice when it comes to humans who choose to murder, rape, drive drunk, steal, or commit any other immoral act? Pro-choice advocates would say no one should outlaw abortion even if they think God wants them to outlaw it; so even pro-choice advocates believe there is a limit to actions we may perform with the free will God has given us.

Other pro-choice advocates claim that if embryos are human beings, the high number of miscarriages (some say as high as 50 percent of all pregnancies) means that God is the greatest abortionist in history. But that makes as much sense as saying that the high number of born people who die makes God the greatest serial killer of all time. God has the right to take human life as well as to judge people in the afterlife. These are rights human beings do not possess, and so human beings may not take innocent human life.

My brother’s keeper?

Another argument made by some religious pro-choice people is that they have no business telling women to not have abortions because that is “between her and God.” But abortion is not a matter solely between a woman and God. It also involves the man who helped conceive the child, the woman’s family, the abortion provider, and most important, the child.

But would the religious critics say the same thing about rape, murder, or arson? If they saw someone about to burn down an orphanage, would they simply say, “Well, they’ll burn in hell anyway, so what business is it of mine to try and stop them? It’s between them and God.” God calls us to root out injustice now and not to wait for him to do it later. Or, as Proverbs 24:11 exhorts us, “Rescue those who are being dragged to death.”

Finally, some religious pro-choice advocates say that abortion is not wrong because aborted babies will go to heaven or be reincarnated and have another life.276 Of course, this argument would justify killing any baby, or even an adult in the state of grace. If we wouldn’t justify killing born children in a nursery in order to send them directly to heaven, then we cannot justify aborting unborn children.

The breath ...

Genesis 2:7, which says, “[T]hen the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” This means that until a baby breathes outside of the womb he or she is not a person and can be aborted.

First, it proves too much, because many babies do not breathe immediately after birth and some can take up to a minute to breathe on their own. This argument would justify infanticide as well as abortion.

Secondly, the unborn do breathe before birth, but through an umbilical cord rather than their mouths. Before they develop the umbilical cord, they absorb oxygen through the lining of their cells in a process called respiration. Not only that, some injured born humans must breathe through a tube in their throat. May we kill these humans because they don’t breathe the “breath of life” through their nostrils like Adam did?

Finally, God had to infuse a human soul directly into Adam (or breathe the “breath of life” into him) because Adam was the first human being. Since all other human beings come into existence from other human beings, the requirement that God must...

Abortion as Go...

Numbers 5:11–31, in which Mosaic Law requires a wife suspected of adultery by her husband to drink water mixed with dust from the tabernacle floor, which will allegedly cause a miscarriage if she has been unfaithful. One pro-choice author says this proves that “a planned abortion is part of God’s law given to Moses.”

But these verses would prove only that abortion is acceptable if God kills a child conceived in adultery. They would not justify legal abortion performed by a human being for any reason at any stage of pregnancy. Plus, God’s killing of a child conceived in adultery would no more disprove that child’s humanity than God’s act of killing David or Pharaoh’s firstborn sons would disprove those children’s humanity. God is allowed to end human life; we are not. Finally, as Francis Beckwith notes, the passage does not seem to refer to the water causing a miscarriage but to causing the woman no longer to be fertile as a punishment for her adultery.

An eye for an eye

Exodus 21:22–23, which describes what the punishment should be for accidentally harming an unborn child: “When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.” Critics use this passage to argue that if the unborn were a full person, the punishment would not be a fine but the death penalty.

How does it follow that because someone is fined for accidentally killing an unborn child God would approve the intentional killing of an unborn child through abortion? After all, there is a punishment, so the child has some value and is not equivalent to disposable medical waste as he is in our legal system. In the preceding verses a man who accidentally kills his slave is not punished, but in the next verse the intentional killing of a slave is treated as grounds for serious punishment, possibly even the death penalty.

It is also not clear exactly what the word injury in these verses means. It could mean an injury that occurs to the pregnant woman, the unborn child, or both. One way to interpret the passage is that if the woman is caused to have an early delivery, then the penalty is a fine, but any further injury to the child is covered under the lex talionis law of “an eye for an eye.”281 Indeed, the text refers to a “child” coming forth, and this is a difficult fact for pro-choice commentators to evade.

But consider this argument: “If an act were immoral, the Bible would condemn it. There are many acts (airplane hijacking, insurance fraud, election rigging) the Bible does not condemn. Therefore, those acts are not wrong.” Clearly, just because an action is not condemned by name in the Bible does not mean that God would support it.

Pro-life Scripture verses

Two passages frequently cited by pro-life advocates lack conclusive pro-life evidence. The first is Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Taken literally, this passage would mean God knew Jeremiah in some kind of preexisting state before he was conceived.282 Clearly this passage is saying that before Jeremiah existed, God foreknew that he would be a prophet, not that he knew Jeremiah personally during that time.

Another common pro-life passage is Psalm 139:13: “For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.” But pro-choice critics are likely to reject passages from the Psalms as being poetic exaggerations. After all, the Psalms also say that God “shelters us under his wing” (Ps. 91:4), but we don’t take that to mean God has feathers. Likewise, because the Bible talks about someone being “knit in their mothers womb” doesn’t mean the person actually existed during gestation.

In Psalm 51:5, David laments, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” How could David be a sinner in the womb if he was not yet a person?

In Luke 1:41, a pregnant Elizabeth says to her cousin Mary, “at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the brephos in my womb leaped for joy.”

The argument from Scripture I prefer is a more modest one. I would simply argue that God forbids the killing of human beings (Exod. 20:13, Prov. 6:16–17), because human beings are made in his image (Gen. 1:26–27). Since we know from science and philosophy that the unborn are human beings, it follows that abortion is wrong. No special argument or appeal is needed to show that abortion is wrong, just as no argument or appeal to Scripture is needed to show that infanticide or rape is wrong.283

Pope St. John Paul II wrote: The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it. But they show such great respect for the human being in the mother’s womb that they require as a logical consequence that God’s commandment “You shall not kill” be extended to the unborn child as well.284

Pro-life tradition

Today we know that a biological human organism is not “formed” like a clay model but possesses a human genetic code that directs its intrinsic development. This makes it a human being whose life begins at conception and who deserves respect and protection under the law. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”289

Arguing against tradition

it claims that in the 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion, the Vatican “acknowledged that it does not know when the fetus becomes a person.” It highlighted this quote from the document: “There is not a unanimous tradition on this point [the exact moment of ensoulment] and authors are as yet in disagreement.”290 This quote comes from a footnote in a section of the declaration that affirms the humanity of the unborn child from conception and condemns any discrimination against human beings, regardless of their level of development. The document says that the humanity of the unborn child from conception has been “confirmed by modern genetic science,” and this fact is true apart from any discussion about when a human embryo receives an immortal soul. It is true that there is disagreement among Christian theologians on exactly which moment an embryo receives a soul. But there is also no way to empirically prove a newborn infant, or anyone for that matter, has an immortal soul. Therefore, this argument from agnosticism proves too much, and it would justify killing humans at any stage of life. It would be more responsible to believe that biological human beings have a right to life, and that is why abortion, infanticide, and other forms of homicide are wrong. Indeed, the footnote from the declaration goes on to say that a human life is still present in the womb, and this fact justifies prohibiting abortion. It also says that if we are unsure about the status of an embryo, then ...

Arguments from conscience and infallibility

Catholics for Choice promotes the idea that an individual’s conscience is the sole and final authority in moral issues. It writes, “[T]he teaching on the primacy of conscience means that every individual must follow his or her ow...

But the idea of a supreme and infallible individual conscience is illogical. For example, my conscience informs me that abortion is tantamount to murder, and it should be made illegal. Should I follow my conscience and work to outlaw abortion? If CFC says I should not do that because that interferes with other people’s consciences, then CFC is wrong about conscience being the sole or final arbiter of truth.

Rather than being the final authority, conscience is like a compass that guides people in unfamiliar situations toward the true “moral” north. But just as a faulty compass will lead people astray, a faulty or ill-formed conscience will do the same. The Catechism states that while we “must always obey the certain judgment of [our] conscience,” it’s possible our conscience can make an “erroneous judgment” due to ignorance or even blindness caused by sin.

CFC also asserts that because the immorality of abortion has not been infallibly defined by the pope, it is a teaching that Catholics are not bound to follow. Like many of CFC’s arguments, this is a half-truth that camouflages a clear falsehood. It is true that no pope has infallibly declared abortion to be morally wrong; but Catholics are obligated to obey not just the special infallibility present in the pope’s ex cathedra declarations. They are also obligated to obey teachings that are infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium of the Church, or those doctrines that the bishops and the pope teach uniformly and definitively about the Faith.

I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

It’s important to know that even if the pope were to infallibly declare abortion to be wrong, CFC would not accept this. In CFC’s magazine Conscience, Rosemary Radford Ruether writes that if the pope were to infallibly define the Church’s prohibition on contraception, it “would have the immediate effect of focusing Catholic dissent on the doctrine of infallibility itself. . . . A storm of dissent, and even ridicule, directed at infallibility itself would ensue from such a declaration.”294 So, rather than obey Church teaching, dissenters like CFC would simply reject whatever teaching they disagree with.