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Summit Lecture Series: The Case for the Pro-Life Position with Scott Klusendorf, part 3

Summit Lecture Series: The Case for the Pro-Life Position with Scott Klusendorf, part 3

Last updated on: September 1, 2015 at 10:29 am by Christian Podcast Central

Summit Lecture Series: The Case for the Pro-Life Position with Scott Klusendorf, part 3 2015-09-01T10:29:01-08:00 Christian Podcast Central

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I am vigorously pro-choice regarding women choosing their own husband, choosing their own health care providers, choosing their own worldview, choosing the careers they wish to pursue, the cars they wish to buy, the pets they wish to own.

I’m pro-choice on all those issues.

BUT, some choices are wrong.

Taking the lives of defenseless human beings simply because they are in the way of something that we want is a WRONG CHOICE.

That’s a choice that a civil society should not allow. However, if a pro-choice advocate, such as Nadine Strossen, can demonstrate that the unborn are not human, then I would concede the pro-choice/pro-life debate.

The problem is that pro-choice advocates do not address this question. Instead, they hold that the question of “What is the unborn” is irrelevant to the pro-choice/pro-life debate for these reasons: abortion_debate_1

People disagree whether or not the unborn are human.
No one knows when life begins.

In a recent debate between myself and Nadine, she produced a statement from the YWCA stating that no one knows when life begins and nobody knows whether or not the unborn are human. Why she chose the YWCA as her source of authority instead of the Science of Embryology, I don’t know. But, my point is that she chose to present that people disagree whether or not the unborn are human. What I don’t understand about this is this: How does it follow that if people disagree, then no one can be right?

Once upon a time, people disagreed whether or not the earth was flat or round. This didn’t mean that there was no right answer. There, in fact, was a right answer and a wrong answer. They weren’t both considered valid simply because the two sides disgreed. The same holds for when people disagreed whether or not slavery should be permitted, or whether women should be allowed to vote

Hadley Arkes put it best when he wrote:

“The absence of consensus does not mean an absence of truth.”

But the bigger problem is the argument that: there is no consensus of whether or not the unborn are human, therefore we may kill the unborn.

Wait a minute! If we don’t know if the unborn are human or not, should we be killing them? If you are driving on the highway at dusk with the sunlight beaming directly into your windshield and you see what appears to be an old coat lying in the road… but you don’t know if it’s an old coat or if it may be an old man in a coat lying in the road, is it morally permissible to run over the “coat” simply because you don’t know for certain if it is a live person or not?

No, you will err on the side of caution and go around it.

Or, as Ronald Reagan said, “If you are out hunting and you see bushes rustling in front of you, and you don’t know if it’s your best friend in the bushes or the deer you have been after, are you going to open fire? No. You will err on the side of caution.”

Unless you are Dick Chaney, perhaps.

My point is, if you don’t know if the unborn are human or not, you should not be killing the unborn.

But, the pro-choice advocates want to completely ignore this issue.

So, how do we deal with people who want to ignore this question?

Ask yourself this question: Would even the staunchest of pro-choice advocates argue that we should have the right to kill toddlers, in the name of trusting women to make their own decisions? Would they argue for even 30 seconds that it is okay to kill two-year-olds because we should respect the privacy of parents?

The only reason Nadine Strossen, and advocates like her, argue that we can kill the unborn for these very reasons is because they assume that the unborn are not human. They don’t argue for it. It is just assumed. It’s as if they say, “I don’t need to answer the question of what we are going to kill before I give you permission to kill that thing.”

But the question “What is the unborn?” HAS to be answered before we can answer the question “should we have the choice to kill this thing?”

So, how do we bring people like Nadine back to this question, even when they don’t want to deal with it?

I use a tactic I call “trod out the toddler”. Here’s how it works:

The next time someone tells you they have the right to an abortion, first ask yourself instinctively if this would work as a good argument for killing a toddler. If the answer is no, then what is the person assuming about the unborn that they are not assuming about the toddler?

They are assuming that the unborn are not human.

So, hold out your hand at waist level so that they can see it. And, when they say something like “…women have the right to privacy…”, do not start arguing about privacy. Because that’s really not the issue. The issue is: What is the unborn? No right-minded person would advocate that it is okay to kill a two-year-old in the name of privacy. toddler1

So, with your hand held out, waist high, ask the person you are talking with, “Should we be allowed to kill a two-year-old in the name of privacy?”

When they reply, “No, of course not”, you answer, Why not?”

They will then answer something to the effect of, “Because he is a human being.”

Your answer: “Ahhh. If the unborn are human beings, like that toddler, we shouldn’t be killing the unborn in the name of privacy any more than we would a toddler for that reason.”

“Oh, but that’s different. The unborn are not human and the toddler is”, they may retort.

“Ahhh… that’s the issue. Are they human, like that toddler?”

When you do this, you haven’t even begun to argue for the pro-life view yet. You have simply framed the debate around the one question that matters most: WHAT IS THE UNBORN?

You must answer that question before you can even begin to discuss “Can I kill the unborn?’

pro-life vs. pro-choice

Scott Klusendorf

The Defense of Abortion

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