Jill Stanek, pro-lifer extraordinaire, posed this question on a defunct blog: Are pro-lifers going to adopt all the unwanted babies? We should welcome this objection by pro-abortionists. It lets us explain the underlying fallacy of their question and how they never apply it in situations outside the womb, how pro-lifers do a lot to help before and after delivery, and how the same obligation of caring falls on them. They may not convert, but any objective middle-grounder will see the merits.
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One of the most common sound bites/jokes that pro-choicers make about pro-lifers is that we are infatuated with the fetus but don’t care about kids after they are born. The message is that if we don’t adopt all unwanted children, then we have no right to complain about abortion. It is an important sound bite to be able to address because it is very common, and even pro-lifers I know are not only intimidated by it, but they have used it themselves as a reason to remain silent about abortion.
The “Pro-lifers don’t care about kids after they are born” line is one of my favorite arguments to rebut. I teach people how to do it in pro-life training sessions in a two-step approach. The tone of the conversation is important. These arguments are powerful and quite effective if they are laid out in a calm, reasoned approach. You probably won’t convert the rabid pro-choicers, but most middle-grounders will get the point.
First, show that pointing out a moral wrong does not obligate you to take responsibility for the situation.
If your neighbor is beating his wife, you call the police. The police don’t say, “Hey, buddy, unless you are willing to marry her yourself, then we aren’t going to stop him from beating her.” You can use child or animal abuse as examples as well. Most people get the point pretty quickly.
Or ask the pro-choicer what they would do if the government decided to reduce the number of homeless people by killing them. Could he protest that without having to house and feed them all himself?
You can also use the “trot out the toddler” approach promoted by Stand to Reason and ask if it would be acceptable to object to murdering a toddler even if you aren’t willing to adopt her. Of course, the pro-choicer will always recognize the moral good of protesting toddler killing. Then you can point out that killing innocent human beings is immoral and that the unborn are human beings. So pointing out this moral wrong does not obligate us to do anything further.
Second, explain that while we aren’t morally obligated to help after the babies are born to be able to speak out against abortion, Christians do many things with their time and money anyway – orphanages, Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), food pantries, etc.
When I’m teaching CPC volunteers, I remind them of all that they and the center do: Pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, food, clothes, diapers, life skill training, parenting training, post-abortion counseling, and more – all for free! And, of course, we share the Gospel with the clients if they are interested (Saving lives now and for eternity!).
The workers are mostly volunteers and the leaders make below-market wages because they believe in the cause. Most centers receive no government funding, so all the money comes from donations. There are far more Crisis Pregnancy Centers than there are abortion clinics.
When I tell people about CPCs, the typical reaction is, “I had no idea.” Most people aren’t aware of all the good being done there. In theory, CPCs are something pro-choicers could support as well. After all, if women choose to keep their children, this is a great way to help them. But Planned Parenthood et al. consider them public enemy #1 because we take away some of their business.
You can also ask pro-choicers what Planned Parenthood and the like do for hurting women once the babies are born. It is a really, really short list. Do they provide free post-abortion counseling? (Of course not, because who would need that, right?) Do they give diapers, formula, etc.? Hey, they don’t even give free abortions (though they would love for your tax dollars to fund some).
Having said all that, I think the church can and should be doing even more in the area of adoptions and support for orphans. Not because having pro-life views requires that, but because it is the right thing to do regardless of whether abortion is legal or illegal.
Here’s a bonus argument: A recent Stand to Reason Podcast brought up another good point that I hadn’t thought of. Here’s an additional response to use: Unless someone concedes to being truly pro-abortion (i.e., they expect women to always have abortions or raise the children with no help from the public), then the pro-choicers are obligated to adopt the children as well. Either that or give up espousing their pro-choice views. After all, if you claim to be pro-choice and the women choose life, then the same caregiving obligation falls on you.
Think about it. It may seem subtle at first, but it is a completely consistent argument. Pro-lifers don’t think it should be an option to kill the unborn, so pro-choicers use the false logic that we can’t complain about abortion if we won’t adopt all the kids and raise them to adulthood. But if the woman decides to choose life, then the pro-choicer would have the same moral obligation to raise the kids.
Pro-legalized abortion commenter: Hard decisions belong between a pregnant woman and her caregivers, not “holier than thou” intruders, unless they personally are willing to raise, including medical care, education, and life care, all those fertilized eggs.
My response: Another canard.
Answer me this: Let’s say the government decides to solve the problem of homelessness by killing homeless people. Can you protest this without being willing to house them yourself?
You can also substitute other examples (Can you call the police if your neighbor is abusing his wife and children without having to marry her and adopt the kids?).
It is a simple question designed to point out the primary error of your argument: You don’t have to take ownership of a situation just because you protest a moral evil.
And even though I don’t have to raise those human beings (the ones you like to call fertilized eggs) just because I protest the evil of abortion, I actually do a lot with my own time and money via CareNet Pregnancy Center.
And by the way, unless you are truly pro-abortion, then you are obligated to help as well. After all, if you claim to be pro-choice and the women choose life, then the same care giving obligation falls on you.
So that argument self-destructs in at least three ways.
Finally, consider if the child was outside the womb. Do the women and her caregivers get to decide if the toddler lives or dies? Of course not. So the only question is whether the unborn is a human being. Since it is a scientific fact that she is, then people shouldn’t get to decide whether to kill her. And Christians especially shouldn’t support anyone’s right to kill her.
Other commenter: BTW, half of fertilized eggs don’t implant in the uterus, so is it illegal for a woman to have mensus?
My response: Are you seriously claiming that you don’t see the difference between the following?
1. Human being dies of natural causes.
2. Human being is crushed and dismembered by another human being.
I think most people can see the difference, whether 1 and 2 occur inside or outside the womb.
I’ve heard all the pro-legalized abortion sound bites many times and will be glad to debunk more for you. I hope that you are intellectually honest and reconsider your position on this crucial issue.
In summary, pointing out the moral evil of abortion does not obligate one to adopt all the babies. But pro-lifers do help anyway. A lot. And they do it with their own time and money, not their neighbors’.
When pro-legalized abortion people try to put you on the defensive by asking how many kids you have adopted, use the reasons above to respond. Also, you can ask how many they adopt from orphanages. If they haven’t adopted any, then according to their logic, they couldn’t protest their destruction.
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Here’s a list you can copy and paste when someone accuses you of being inconsistent:
Do you know how much time and money I donate to help the poor or how much I pay in taxes? [Pause] Didn’t think so. So why not stick to the topic, which is whether you should be able to crush and dismember children in the womb? The “pro-lifers don’t care about those outside the womb/haven’t adopted all the children/etc.” canard is false on many levels.
1. If people were slaughtering toddlers, the elderly, or anyone else the way they do unborn children, I guarantee that we would be protesting that as well. So we are completely consistent in protecting innocent human lives regardless of location, and yes, we do care for life post-birth.
2. You can speak against moral evils all day, every day, without being obligated to care for all the victims for life. If mothers were killing toddlers for the same reasons they give for abortions (money, career, love life, pressure from boyfriends/parents, etc.) would you stay quiet? Would you lodge the same criticism at those who spoke against toddler-cide without adopting all the children? Hopefully not. The question is whether the unborn are human beings. They are. At least, that’s what all the embryology textbooks say. Just because they are smaller, more dependent, and in a unique environment (formerly synonymous with a safe place) doesn’t mean their lives aren’t worthy of protection. The right to life is a foundational human right.
3. The premise is false. Countless pro-lifers help women and children before and after birth with their own time and money. Pregnancy Resource Centers offer an array of free services. Planned Parenthood and the like make millions via abortion.
4. Asking the government to take money by force from others to supposedly help the poor does not qualify as charity on your part.
5. Do you criticize the American Cancer Society for not working on heart disease? If not, why are you being prideful about your preferred ministry over what others feel called to? That is if you actually do anything for others at all. Using your logic, William Wilberforce didn’t do much because he “only” cared about abolishing the slave trade (not true, of course, as he did more than that, but it shows how ridiculous the pro-abortion argument is).
6. Unless they want forced abortions, pro-choicers have the same obligations to help that they put on pro-lifers.
7. The claim that we don’t care about children outside the womb is demonstrably false. But even if their claim was true, it seems like the greater sin would be to approve of a child being literally crushed and dismembered rather than just not personally feeding someone else’s living child.
8. Imagine saying something similar to justify keeping slavery legal: “You think slavery is wrong but won’t help them get jobs, etc.”
9. Your basic reasoning is this: “It is OK to kill the child but not to risk her being impoverished.”
10. If you actually help them outside the womb with your money, we could swap labels and dismiss you: “You only help them outside but let them be killed inside.” Still illogical, but that’s what you get.
Be prepared, people! Abortion is going to be a hot topic for some time, and you’ll constantly come across fallacious pro-abortion sound bites. Bookmark this if you like, as I’ll be updating it as I think of other examples. I offered multiple answers to some objections. Let me know in the comments section if you think of others.
I’m using anti-abortion instead of pro-life for a reason. It cuts down on one of the baseless pro-abortion attack lines. Sure, call me anti-abortion, because I am anti-child murder. And I’m using pro-abortion because anyone who demands that others pay for abortions to the child’s first breath is more than just pro-choice. You can soften the snarkiness as you see fit, especially in one-on-one encounters, but sometimes evil ideas deserve mockery.
Whenever you can, “trot out the toddler” and show how most pro-abortion arguments fail when applied to toddlers. Then you point out how the real issue is that the unborn are human beings from fertilization, so the pro-abortion reasoning fails for them as well.
I use some terms interchangeably, such as kill/murder and abortion/crushing and dismembering. They may sound extreme, but so is killing children. Sometimes people need to be confronted with what they are actually supporting.
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One example of the stupidity I saw on social media on “No-mo-Roe” day (which should now be a national holiday). Of course, it got lots of cheers from fellow Molech-worshiping ghouls who don’t know how to think critically.
This marks the first time in history that the United States Supreme Court has taken away a constitutional right…
No, the Supreme Court rightly ruled that there had never been a Constitutional right to kill your child.
What happened to the separation of church and state?
This had nothing to do with church and state. It was about what the Constitution says. Try reading it. That said, God is against killing your children. You’ll answer to him for that.
What happened to my rights over my body and what I choose to do with it?
There are countless laws telling you what you can’t do with your body, such as killing your children outside the womb. Now some states will have laws making it illegal to kill them inside the womb. Do what you like, just don’t kill your children. Or live in one of the many states where you can still legally kill your children.
What next? We can no longer purchase contraceptives?
Hold on, drama queen. There is nothing about that in the Constitution, either. It should be left to the states, which are unlikely to ban them.
What about the right to love who you love?
The Constitution has never said anything about who you can love. Oh, you mean whether oxymoronic “same-sex marriage” is enshrined in the Constitution? Yeah, hopefully, they’ll get rid of that silly ruling as well.
What about trans rights?
“Trans” rights? Sure, I suppose you have the legal right to be delusional and mock God’s created order. I’ll defend those rights. But you don’t have the right to push your perversions on children or to force me to lie and say that people can change genders. I won’t violate my conscience that way. And no, the Constitution said nothing about “trans” rights.
Oh, but you can still own an assault rifle and that’s all that matter right???
Yes, because that is in the Constitution! Thanks for noticing.
This ruling won’t end abortions, only the safe ones.
They are never safe for the child you murder. And we are under no obligation to make it safer for you to murder your child. And make no mistake: It will reduce abortions. Every life counts.
This ruling is not a ban on abortions, it’s a ban on women.
LOL that’s just stupid. Yeah, we’ve now banned women. They disappeared.
Sorry but we aren’t going to revert back to being worth less than a man.
So if you can’t legally kill your children you are less than a man? That’s some pretty low self-esteem you have there.
It’s time to fight back.
Too bad the 50,000,000 children you murdered couldn’t fight back.
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Pro-abortion: If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament! (Also: “If men could get pregnant, abortions would be available at Jiffy Lube!”)
Anti-abortion: If men could get pregnant, it would be wrong for them to murder their unborn children.
P.S. You seem transphobic, but thanks for conceding that men and women are different and that men can’t have babies.
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PA: If you don’t have a uterus, you don’t get to speak on this!
AA: We can speak any time we like when people are being killed without adequate justification.
So on your logic, we should overturn Roe v Wade because it was decided by men?
Over 50% of abortions kill females, and nearly all gender-selection abortions kill females for the sole reason that they are female. Don’t their uteruses get a say?
Women are more pro-life than men. Go figure.
P.S. You seem transphobic, but thanks for conceding that men and women are different and that men can’t have babies.
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PA: But the children might be poor!
AA: Using that logic, you should kill your toddlers or other children who are poor. Also, compared to the U.S. definition of poor, 99% of the people who have ever lived anywhere should have been aborted.
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PA: If you don’t like abortions, don’t have one!
AA: If you don’t want people to kill their toddlers, don’t kill your toddler.
Can you see how childish your argument sounds when you ignore the child murdered in the abortion?
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PA: Abortions are completely moral acts! They are not sinful.
AA: Do you realize that you are telling everyone – including friends, any children and grandchildren you have, and yourself — that it would have been completely moral to crush and dismember them in the womb rather than letting them live? I pity the children and grandchildren who hear that message!
Seriously, picture someone saying this: “It is very important to Grandma that I fight for the right for mothers to be able to have their children killed. You are safe now, but I wanted your mother to have the right to kill you up to your first breath.”
Yes, I know no one would say it like that, but that’s exactly what their message is.
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PA: Girls born today will have fewer rights than those born 50 years ago!
AA: But they will be born.
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PA: But the child could impact the woman’s career/love life/education/etc.
AA: On that logic, she could kill her toddler with impunity. None of those reasons are adequate justification to kill her child.
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PA: But the children might turn out poor or become criminals.
AA: You could say the same thing about many toddlers in this country, but that wouldn’t justify crushing and dismembering them.
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PA: She’s not ready to be a mother.
AA: She’s already a mother; the question is whether she’ll have her child murdered.
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PA: Pro-lifers don’t care about children after they are born!
AA: We are remarkably consistent: We oppose murdering children regardless of their location – inside or outside the womb.
More here:
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PA: A woman has a right to choose!
AA: If you are talking about school choice, or whether to own a gun, homeschool your children, take vaccines, get married, etc. then I’m with you. But you need to complete the sentence: You think women have a right to choose to murder their unborn children. There is a reason you don’t finish the thought.
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PA: It isn’t a child, it is a blob of cells!
AA: Your problem is with the nice folks at Dictionary.com, not me.
Child: 4. a human fetus: My sister miscarried with her first child at seven months. [Although in the pro-abortion case, their definition could have said, “My sister killed her first child at seven months.”]
And Joe Biden agrees with me! Joe Biden says abortion would “abort a child.”
I’ve been encouraging people to use “child” instead of “baby” because the former is more precise.
Also, even Planned Parenthood always knew what abortion does. From their 1964 ad:
Is it [birth control] an abortion?
Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.
Every related scientific discovery made since then, plus tools like ultrasounds, serve to further that point.
I concede that technically it is a fetus and not a baby, even though that’s what Planned Parenthood called it. I don’t correct people who euphemistically call them babies. But they are human beings at a particular stage of development who have a right to life.
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PA: We don’t know when life begins!
AA: Then you should err on the side of life.
Oh, and we do know when life begins: Fertilization. It is basic science and common sense.
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PA and some AA people: Women are the victims of abortion, too!
AA: No. If you take out a contract to have someone killed, under no circumstance are you the victim. You may be in a very complex situation and might be getting pressured to do something wrong, but I won’t infantilize you and say you didn’t know what you were doing. If you were killing your toddler for the same reasons no one would consider you a victim.
Many pro-lifers either fear women or are condescending to them by pretending they don’t know what abortion does. The writers of the Hippocratic Oath — which was written well over 2,000 years ago — knew exactly what abortion did, and as late as the 1960s Planned Parenthood said that abortion kills “babies.” And feminists encourage people to “shout their abortions” out of pride for what they have done.
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PA: What about victims of rape and incest?
AA: Are you saying that you’d support making all abortions illegal except in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother? If not, then why are you exploiting rape victims to make your case for unrestricted abortions?
Feel free to punish the rapist, but don’t kill the innocent child. Using your logic, a woman could kill her toddler conceived in rape if it reminded her of the trauma.
Also, abortion is often used to hide the vile crimes of rape, incest, and sex trafficking. What better way to destroy the evidence? Yet Planned Parenthood, which pretends to care for women, has been caught hiding these crimes countless times.
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PA: You just want to take us back to the bad old days!
AA: Even the “restrictive” laws of states like Mississippi are more liberal than any European nation. Only North Korea and China have abortion laws as barbaric as those in the U.S. When Europeans think your abortions laws are over the top, you might want to lay off the child-killing just a bit.
But yes, we want to go back to the days when it was illegal to murder your children in the womb.
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PA: You are just forcing your religious views on us!
AA: The non-religious Hippocratic Oath, written hundreds of years B.C., was explicitly anti-abortion.
If you saw a toddler being murdered, would you be wrongly “forcing your views” by intervening?
Are the pro-abortion “Christian” Leftists “forcing their religious views” on others when they lobby for abortion to the child’s first breath? If not, then stop using that fallacious argument inconsistently.
I can argue against child murder all day long without referencing the Bible, but I’ll be glad to tell you about how Jesus can forgive all of your sins if you’d like.
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PA: You are anti-science!
AA: Science and common sense completely support our foundational premise that a new human being is created at fertilization. Go check out any mainstream secular embryology textbook. What else would two human beings create?
I’m too pro-science to be pro-abortion.
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PA: Why do you oppose reproductive healthcare for women?
AA: Abortion kills children who have already been reproduced. Otherwise, there would be nothing to kill. “Reproductive health” is a deadly and illogical euphemism. You should stop using it.
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PA: You are anti-women!
AA: More than half of abortions kill females. Nearly all gender-selection abortions kill female children for the sole reason that they are female. Seems misogynistic to me. Our policies would save their lives.
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PA: You are anti-choice!
AA: Why, yes, I am anti-choice to crush and dismember innocent human beings. Thanks for noticing.
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PA: Women will still have just as many abortions. You’ll just be forcing them to have dangerous illegal “back-alley” abortions.
AA: Cold, hard truth: Society has no obligation to make it easier for you to kill your children, regardless of their location.
Are you conceding that if you ban guns people will still get them illegally?
Sadly, even if Roe v Wade is overturned, you’ll still be able to legally have your child murdered in many states. California is already planning on lots of “abortion tourism.” Now that’s Satanic.
Abortions skyrocketed after Roe v Wade, and Leftists concede that outlawing abortion would “decimate” hook-up culture. Laws greatly influence behavior. Just because laws against stealing don’t stop all stealing, it doesn’t mean we don’t keep the laws on the books. It is the same logic for child murder.
The statistics showing women dying of abortions were wildly overstated pre-Roe v Wade, and even those were typically due to a lack of antibiotics.
Pro-abortion groups aggressively fight safety standards, and pressure law enforcement to ignore the ones in place. See Kermit Gosnell.
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PA: That’s so mean to call these women murderers! And it is inaccurate because abortions are currently legal.
AA: As Abraham Lincoln noted, even if you call a dog’s tail a leg, it still has just four legs. Calling something the wrong name doesn’t change reality. In God’s eyes, taking human life without adequate justification is murder.
But there is good news! Abortion is forgivable if only people will repent and trust in Jesus.
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PA: Opposing abortion is racist!
AA: Abortion kills blacks at a rate over three times that of whites. If that isn’t an example of “systemic racism,” then nothing is. And that rate isn’t an accident. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an extreme racist. With our policies, the percentage of black people in the country would be higher. How is that racist? And most abortionists have traditionally been white males getting rich by killing black children.
Bonus answer: Pregnancy resource centers are funded and staffed with mostly whites and they serve mostly non-whites. How is that racist? Same thing for prison ministries.
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PA: Women have bodily autonomy! My body, my choice!
AA: That right ends when it comes to destroying the body of another human – especially when it is your child. You have a wildly different obligation towards your own child versus a stranger.
Examples such as the “violin argument,” forced blood or organ donations, etc. are unnatural uses of your body, whereas a uterus is designed explicitly to nurture an unborn child.
Ninety-nine percent of all abortions in the U.S. are performed on women who chose to have sexual intercourse.
Abortion is not just letting an innocent person die, or taking them off of life support. Abortion is an active, violent form of killing.
P.S. You said that about vaccine and mask mandates as well, right? I’m sure you didn’t cheer when people got fired for being unwilling to take the vaccine or when schoolchildren were forced to be masked.
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PA: It is between a woman and her doctor!
AA: A woman and her doctor can’t kill a toddler for the reasons given for abortion. So the question is, what is the unborn? Factually speaking, they are human beings. I don’t care if Dr. Mengele is on board or not, you shouldn’t kill the child.
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PA: Keep the government out of our bedrooms!
AA: One role of government is to address the wrongful taking of human lives, regardless of location. And most children are killed at abortion clinics, not in bedrooms.
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PA: Pro-lifers show those awful pictures of abortions. That is wrong!
AA: What could be more relevant to a debate than images of the procedure in question?
Is it OK to kill unborn humans but wrong to show pictures of the practice?
Which is worse, letting children see those pictures or letting them be in those pictures?
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PA: Pro-lifers are extremists!
AA: Killing your own children up to their first breath and without anesthetic, and wanting others to be forced to pay for it, seems extreme to me.
And who are the real extremists? The abortion debate seems to be a 50/50 split until you ask more specific questions. Then the Leftist view becomes the extreme one.
Pro-choice views (Gallup, 2011)
Make abortion illegal in the 3rd trimester – 79%
Make abortion illegal in the 2nd trimester – 52%
Ban “partial-birth abortion” – 63%
Require parental consent for minors – 60%
Require 24 waiting period – 60%
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PA: But Jesus said nothing about abortion (or LGBTQX, etc.)!
AA: Logic of those who use this argument: Whatever Jesus did not specifically condemn in the Bible is morally permissible. In the “red letters” (direct quotes of Jesus) He did not specifically condemn abortion. Conclusion: Therefore, abortion is morally permissible.
But the “red letters” also didn’t specifically mention slavery, drunk driving, child sacrifice, gay-bashing, and many other wrongs.
The “red letters” did call murder a sin, and when the Israelites sacrificed their children to Molech and others, God denounced it in the strongest possible terms.
Jesus is divine and agrees with the entire Bible (Matthew 4:4 and more).
In Luke 1, which many people hear every Christmas, 2nd trimester John the Baptist reacted to 1st trimester Jesus. They were both persons in the womb.
The Israelites viewed children as a blessing and abortion wasn’t a major issue in 1st century Palestine.
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PA: But your God performs the most abortions! [i.e., miscarriages]
AA: Dying early doesn’t make you non-human. Abortions aren’t miscarriages. Can they see the difference between these?
Human outside (or inside) the womb dies of natural causes
Human outside (or inside) the womb killed by a third party
In other words, grandma dying of natural causes is different than grandma being bludgeoned to death.
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PA: The book of Numbers shows that God is pro-abortion.
AA: What verse in Numbers 5 says the woman is pregnant? What verse says she has a miscarriage? (The NIV has a mistranslation of the original text, but other, more accurate versions make it clear). Even if she had a miscarriage as a punishment for adultery, how would that mean that God is OK with abortion at any stage for any reason? More here.
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PA: Exodus 21 supports abortion because it says that a miscarriage is less valuable than a woman’s life.
AA: Here’s the passage in question:
When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Exodus 21:22–25, ESV)
The key word of the passage is sometimes not translated well and says “miscarriage” instead of “children come out.” If you study the original Hebrew it becomes very clear that Moses did not mean that if the child is killed that the penalty is less severe.
More here, with a listing of all the errors that pro-aborts make with this passage.
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PA: These abortive women have terrible situations!
AA: That may be the case, but don’t confuse psychological complexity with moral complexity. Their personal issues may be complex, but the morality is simple. You shouldn’t kill toddlers for the reasons given for abortions, so you shouldn’t kill unborn children, either.
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PA: But the unborn aren’t persons yet!
AA: That is an artificial and false distinction. Using that logic, you could kill infants as well. The size, level of development, environment, and dependency of human beings don’t dictate whether you can kill them.
Whether they have consciousness is irrelevant. Neither do people who are asleep or in comas. To legally remove someone from life support who is not conscious (abortion fails on both counts):
You need to demonstrate that you are acting in that person’s best interests, as they would so act if they were conscious
That there is little or no hope of recovery.
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PA: Christians are just repressed sexually, hate women, are greedy, are insane, etc.
AA: Compared to non-Christians, we adopt more children, have better sex lives, are more generous, have better mental health, and treat women better. Oh, and we have been completely forgiven and will spend eternity in Heaven with God. Please seek Jesus for yourself while there is still time! More at 5 Statistics Reveal Christianity Is Good for the World.
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PA: You are just against women’s freedom!
AA: We are all for freedom to own guns, home school your children, not take vaccines, etc. If we make it illegal for them to murder their children, they are still free to destroy their lives with all the soul-destroying, disease-spreading illicit sex that they like. I advise against that behavior, but we aren’t legislating it. Just don’t complain to us when they are miserable and unmarriageable cat ladies.
Side question for the PAs: Is Islam correct about women? Asking for a friend.
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PA: Abortion is health care!
AA: No, healthcare is when you don’t crush and dismember one of the patients.
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PA: It is better to destroy one life than three! [i.e., abortion will destroy the life of the child, but letting her live will destroy the lives of her and the parents]
AA: You’ve used a different definition of destroy in those cases*. Destroying the life of the child means the literal crushing and dismembering of a human being. Destroying the life of all three implies that all of them will now have bad lives, but they will still be alive. And you falsely assume that all of their lives will be ruined**. There are countless stories of lives turning out well. Consider adoption instead of abortion.
Side note: A guy used that exact argument with me. He had pressured his daughter to kill his grandchild. It destroyed their relationship for a time and he was in deep denial over what he had done. By the grace of God, he later repented of it and restored his relationship with her.
* Logical fallacy: Equivocation
** Logical fallacy: Begging the question
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PA: Adoption is hard on women.
AA: Perhaps, but at least they can always know they gave their child a better life instead of crushing and dismembering them out of selfishness.
And abortion is hard on the child getting slaughtered.
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PA: If women have to bear children, then men have to take equal responsibility!
AA: Short answer: OK.
Longer answer: We already have laws on the books to address that concern. More than that, the deck is so stacked against men that paternity fraud goes unpunished and men can be liable for 18 years if they sign birth certificates for children that aren’t theirs. If you want fairness, get rid of those laws.
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PA: Pro-lifers are inconsistent for opposing abortion but being pro-capital punishment!
AA: That’s a great argument, provided you can’t see the difference between a completely innocent human child and a convicted murderer who survived 10+ years of appeals.
Actually, I am OK with unrestricted access to abortions – provided that the unborn get the same 10+ years of appeals as condemned killers. I’m pretty sure that at that stage they won’t want to be crushed and dismembered. As Ronald Reagan said, all the people who support abortion have already been born.
P.S. If you will agree to ban abortions then I’ll agree to ban capital punishment. Deal? Yeah, I didn’t think you’d agree to that.
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PA: You are anti-choice!
AA: You got to make your choices: to meet men, to have sex, not to use birth control, and to get pregnant. You got to make all kinds of choices. No, what you’re complaining about is that now you have to live with the consequences of your choices: which you’ll have to do even if you do murder the life that now grows in you.
AA: You got to make choices. The man who got you pregnant got to make choices. The life that now lives in you won’t get to make choices – but will thrive or suffer based on your choices.
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PA: It is just a clump of cells! (Or blob of cells, etc.)
AA: You’re still a clump of cells — just a much bigger one. I guess your life can be taken, too! Or are you simply discriminating against people who are smaller clumps than you? Does Shaquille O’Neal have more of a right to life than the rest of us?
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Here’s a version with audio and video if you prefer that. Bonus: Lots of Bible verses at the end!
Science is clear that life begins at conception. Just go read any secular embryology textbook. Or use basic logic: What else would two human beings create other than a new human being? The pro-abortion forces have had to shift to poorly conceived philosophical arguments to justify the killing of unborn human beings. The alleged pro-science crowd lies and says they don’t know when life begins or what a female is.
But what did doctors and other reproductive professionals such as Planned Parenthood think about abortion before recent scientific discoveries? Did they think the unborn were just blobs of tissue and that abortion was morally benign? Let’s see.
First, a look at the original Hippocratic Oath. The removal of the prohibitions against abortion in the latest revisions of the oath was done in our more “enlightened” scientific days.
The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in the 4th century BC, or by one of his students. It is thus usually included in the Hippocratic Corpus. Classical scholar Ludwig Edelstein proposed that the oath was written by Pythagoreans, a theory that has been questioned due to the lack of evidence for a school of Pythagorean medicine. Although mostly of historical and traditional value, the oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine, although it is not obligatory and no longer taken up by all physicians.
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The original oath:
I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath. To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.
To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.
Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.
In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the meaning of life.
There you have it! Straight from the experts at Planned Parenthood. Read that again and try not to drown in the morbid irony.
So Planned Parenthood used to teach that abortion kills a baby and poses medical risks to the mother, and the “unenlightened” doctors viewed abortion as immoral for a couple thousand years.
What did Planned Parenthood and other medical practitioners learn since the early 1960s that caused them to change their stance on what abortion really does? What do they know that Hippocrates et al didn’t know 2,000 years earlier?
Could it be scientific advancements such as sonograms and 4-D ultrasounds? No, those do more than anything to promote the pro-life view. Technology is the enemy of pro-legalized-abortionists and it always will be. They might have gotten away with the “blob of tissue” argument in the 60’s, or 400 years B.C., but not today. No, wait, even back then the experts knew better than to believe that silly lie! It took a couple thousand years to convince people to believe the unbelievable.
Could it be the studies showing the impact of abortion on women? No. Despite major political pressure, more studies continue to show the adverse impact abortion has on women – both physically and emotionally.
No, even non-Jewish and non-Christian types like Hippocrates and Planned Parenthood used to know that abortion was wrong. It takes a lot of effort and deliberate ignorance of scientific facts to rationalize otherwise.
I’m re-running this in light of all the bad arguments the Molech-worshiping ghouls are throwing out in reaction to the Texas abortion law.
This is a video version of the PowerPoint slides I’ve shared before. I taught this for years to volunteers at Care Net Pregnancy Center. What was always interesting is how these great folks, who were strongly pro-life, hadn’t heard how to make the case for life and how to respond to pro-choice sound bites. And most of them had never heard of people like Kermit Gosnell, the greatest serial killer in American history, because they got most of their news from the mainstream media that successfully hid his story.
I taught this for years to volunteers at Care Net Pregnancy Center. What was always interesting is how these great folks, who were strongly pro-life, hadn’t heard how to make the case for life and how to respond to pro-choice sound bites. Most of them had never heard of people like Kermit Gosnell, the greatest serial killer in American history, because they got most of their news from the mainstream media that successfully hid his story. I hope this helps you make the case for life and gives you more confidence in defending pro-life views.
I just realized I never came up with a standard reply to that fallacious pro-abortion sound bite. Here’s a draft — edits welcomed. Feel free to use without attribution.
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I have no interest in your uterus. I do care about the lives of innocent human beings, regardless of their location. And it is a scientific fact that the unborn are human beings* from fertilization, and we should protect those human beings from being destroyed without adequate justification.
For the sake of consistency I’m sure you reject the support of pro-abortion men, because they should have no say over your uterus. And we should overturn Roe v Wade because it was passed exclusively by males.
And I’m sure you fight Obamacare and the like with the same sound bites. After all, if it is your uterus (and everything else) then you’d never be such a hypocrite as to demand that other people pay for its care, birth control, etc., eh?
There is nothing less attractive to me than a woman willing to kill her own child. So even if I wasn’t happily married I would never care about the uterus — or anything else — of a pro-abortion woman, regardless of her beauty or other traits.
FLUKE: Well, I’m so glad you asked because this is a huge victory for the women of Texas and so many states that were really suffering under these trapped laws. But we have an ongoing fight in many states, especially around a affordability. This is about making the right to reproductive access a reality in practice, not just on paper. And if you can’t afford to exercise this right, it’s really not as meaningful to you. So for women who are in the military, women who receive medicaid, and even women who live in states where they can’t afford or are not allowed to buy insurance that covers abortion on their state exchanges, they have major barriers to access. And that’s our next fight.
Please let me translate: “Hi, I’m Sandra Fluke. Sure, I could afford $50,000 per year for law school, but I slept around so much that I couldn’t afford condoms. And the guys I slept with (they weren’t committed enough to me to call them “boyfriends”) didn’t value me enough to pay for them. So it is the responsibility of society to pay! And if the birth control fails, or I’m just too irresponsible to use it properly, then society needs to pay to have my child killed. Because reproductive rights (uh, please ignore the fact that if I’m killing my child I have obviously already exercised my right to reproduce). P.S. I have no idea why people call us “pro-abortion” and not pro-choice . . . I mean, just because we don’t want taxpayers to be able to choose whether they pay for more abortions . . . ”
The “Christian” Left agrees with her and thinks we should all have to pay for anyone wanting to kill their child up to her first breath. Behold their god:
I often use the snippet below when addressing pro-life reasoning online or in person. One can obviously go in-depth on any number of pro-life topics and responses to pro-abortion arguments, but I like to have something short yet comprehensive handy. Feel free to use without attribution if you would find it helpful in any way. Hat tip to Stand to Reason for the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.
Pro-life reasoning is simple and accurate: It is a scientific fact (http://tinyurl.com/yfje8lq ) and basic common sense (what else would two human beings produce?) that a new human being is reproduced at fertilization. Seriously, go check out any mainstream embryology textbook. I’m too pro-science to be pro-choice. Based on the settled science, it is then simple moral reasoning that it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being without proper justification, and that is what happens during 99% of abortions.
The situations surrounding abortions are psychologically complex (pressures on the mother to abort, economic concerns, etc.) but morally simple (you don’t kill unwanted humans outside the womb for those reasons, so you shouldn’t kill them inside the womb for those reasons). Their size, level of development, location and degree of dependency are not reasons to ignore their right to life. Arguments about “bodily autonomy” ignore the body destroyed in the abortion.
In other words, it is wrong to take the life of an innocent human being without proper justification. Abortion does that. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
Clinton had some harsh words for his fellow pro-aborts’ extremism:Clinton said that pro-choice activists “framed the question selfishly by putting it in terms of a woman’s right to do whatever she wanted,” making it seem like they were fighting for a “selfish woman’s right to crush her baby’s skull.”Clinton saw some of the pro-choice stances as extreme, such as the belief that third-trimester abortion should be legal.“I believe that if you can’t make up your mind in the first six months, you don’t have the right to have an abortion,” Clinton said according to Branch.“He said the pro-choice people have essentially allowed their own insensitivities to push them into a losing political situation and make a statesman out of Rick Santorum, which he rolled his eyes at,” said Branch.That’s all very interesting, considering Clinton vetoed a partial-birth abortion ban, and his wife Hillary defended and voted for partial-birth abortion and opposes banning abortions after five months. So, Mr. President, were you “insensitive,” too? Is your wife fighting for “selfishness”?The answer is simple: Bill wasn’t speaking from the goodness of his heart, but talking about the political inexpediency of the losing issue the abortion lobby saddled him with. Still, it’s a remarkable admission that the man reporter Nina Burleigh once said she’d give sexual favors to “just to thank him for keeping abortion legal” knew all along that partial-birth abortion “crushed babies’ skulls”…yet was perfectly willing to protect it anyway.The Free Beacon reports that President Clinton declined to comment on the revelations, which is in his and his wife’s best interest—surely they don’t want the American people thinking about whether vicious lies about political opponents and knowing support for crushing the skulls of innocent children are values they want back in the White House.
Yes, the “Christian” Left does fight for a “selfish woman’s right to crush her baby’s skull.” Not only that, but they say Jesus agrees with them. Because love.
When Bill Clinton has demonstrably higher moral values than you do then you should know you have a big problem.
And he uses the same horrifically flawed reasoning that they do to justify destroying unwanted children.
The “Christian” Left loudly, proudly and unequivocally insists that Jesus approves of abortions at any time and for any reason up the child’s first breath*.
According to the bible, a fetus is not a living person with a soul until after drawing its first breath.
The “Christian” Left* is far more extreme in their pro-abortion agenda than the average pro-choice person. I realize how ridiculous their views sound and how many people must think I’m making a straw-man argument. But that is just because their own words are so clear and extreme.
And they are the same words used by convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell — the most prolific serial killer in American history —to justify snipping the necks of children who had the audacity to temporarily survive his abortion procedures.
“My youngest son asked me, ‘Dad, did you do these horrible things that are in the newspaper?’ and I said, ‘Alex, I don’t want to lie to you. I really have to do a lot of reading to feel comfortable that I in fact was on solid ground in my thoughts and my approaches.’ And until I really completed my first Genesis through Revelation reading of the Bible which I did since I was incarcerated, I really didn’t feel as comfortable as I am.
Genesis begins almost – I think it’s Genesis 2:7 expresses the breath of life as the beginning of life. That God breathed breath, breathed life into Adam. The Bible to me is very clear that life does not happen until breath.
I very strongly believe in my innocence, and there are many people who believe that. There are many people who come to me who say that, ‘How could you be this terrible person and people are coming to you for 40 years?’ The story just doesn’t make sense.”
There is a movie about Gosnell coming out, so hopefully more people will learn about him. During his trial the pro-abortion extremist mainstream media virtually ignored it. Even when I would train new volunteers on pro-life reasoning at Care Net Pregnancy — a pro-life audience if there ever was one! — 3/4 of the people had never heard of Gosnell because of the media blackout.
*More hereabout how to respond all the pro-abortion reasoning of the false teachers of the “Christian” Left with full, in-context quotes from them.
One of the most common sound bites/jokes that pro-choicers make about pro-lifers is that we are infatuated with the fetus but don’t care about kids after they are born. The message is that if we don’t adopt all unwanted children, then we have no right to complain about abortion. It is an important sound bite to be able to address because it is very common, and even pro-lifers I know are not only intimidated by it, but they have used it themselves as a reason to remain silent about abortion.
Eternity Matters 