How To Defend Your Pro-Life View In 5 Minutes

How To Defend your Pro-Life Views in 5 Minutes

Issue #1 - How to Defend Your Pro-Life Views in 5 Minutes or Less

By Scott Klusendorf

Suppose that you have just five minutes to graciously defend your pro-life beliefs with friends or classmates. Can you do it with rational arguments? What should you say? And how can you simplify the abortion issue for those who think it's hopelessly complex?

Here's how to succeed in three easy steps:

1) Clarify the issue. Pro-life advocates contend that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion controversy by focusing public attention on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the distinct human being, with his or her own inherent moral worth, as nothing more than a disposable instrument. Conversely, if the unborn are not human, killing them for any reason requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled.

In other words, arguments based on "choice" or "privacy" miss the point entirely. Would anyone that you know support a mother killing her toddler in the name of "choice and who decides?" Clearly, if the unborn are human, like toddlers, we shouldn't kill them in the name of choice anymore than we would a toddler. Again, this debate is about just one question: What is the unborn?

At this point, some may object that your comparisons are not fair- that killing a fetus is morally different than killing a toddler. Ah, but that's the issue, isn't it? Are the unborn, like toddlers, members of the human family? That is the one issue that matters.

Remind your critics that you are vigorously "pro-choice" when it comes to women choosing a number of moral goods. You support a woman's right to choose her own doctor, to choose her own husband, to choose her own job, and to choose her own religion, to name a few. These are among the many choices that you fully support for women. But some choices are wrong, like killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way and cannot defend themselves.1 No, we shouldn't be allowed to choose that.

2) Defend your pro-life position with science and philosophy. Scientifically, we know that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Leading embryology books confirm this.2 Prior to his abortion advocacy, former Planned Parenthood President Dr. Alan Guttmacher was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would question this. "This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn't part of the common knowledge," he wrote in his book Life in the Making.3

Philosophically, we can say that embryos are less developed than newborns (or, for that matter, toddlers) but this difference is not morally significant in the way abortion advocates need it to be.

Consider the claim that the immediate capacity for self-awareness bestows value on human beings. Notice that this is not an argument, but an arbitrary assertion. Why is some development needed? And why is this particular degree of development (i.e., higher brain function) decisive rather than another? These are questions that abortion advocates do not adequately address.

Put simply, there is no morally significant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not relevant such that we can say that you had no rights as an embryo but you do have rights today. Think of the acronym SLED as a helpful reminder of these non-essential differences:4

Size: True, embryos are smaller than newborns and adults, but why is that relevant? Do we really want to say that large people are more human than small ones? Men are generally larger than women, but that doesn't mean that they deserve more rights. Size doesn't equal value.

Level of development: True, embryos and fetuses are less developed than you and I. But again, why is this relevant? Four year-old girls are less developed than 14 year-old ones. Should older children have more rights than their younger siblings? Some people say that self-awareness makes one human. But if that is true, newborns do not qualify as valuable human beings. Six-week old infants lack the immediate capacity for performing human mental functions, as do the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, and those with Alzheimer's Disease.

Environment: Where you are has no bearing on who you are. Does your value change when you cross the street or roll over in bed? If not, how can a journey of eight inches down the birth-canal suddenly change the essential nature of the unborn from non-human to human? If the unborn are not already human, merely changing their location can't make them valuable.

Degree of Dependency: If viability makes us human, then all those who depend on insulin or kidney medication are not valuable and we may kill them. Conjoined twins who share blood type and bodily systems also have no right to life.

In short, it's far more reasonable to argue that although humans differ immensely with respect to talents, accomplishments, and degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature.

3) Challenge your listeners to be intellectually honest. Ask the tough questions. When critics say that birth makes the unborn human, ask, "How does a mere change of location from inside the womb to outside the womb change the essential nature of the unborn?" If they say that brain development or higher consciousness makes us human, ask if they would agree with Joseph Fletcher that those with an IQ below 20 or perhaps 40 should be declared non-persons? If not, why not? True, some people will ignore the scientific and philosophic case you present for the pro-life view and argue for abortion based on self-interest. That is the lazy way out. Remind your critics that if we care about truth, we will courageously follow the facts wherever they lead, no matter what the cost to our own self-interests.

1 Gregory Koukl, Precious Unborn Human Persons (Lomita: STR Press, 1999) p. 11.

2 See T.W. Sadler, Langman's Embryology, 5th ed. (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1993) p. 3; Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (Toronto: B.C. Decker, 1988) p. 2; Oa'Rahilly, Ronand and Muller, Pabiola, Human Embryology and Teratology, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996) pp. 8, 29.

3 A. Guttmacher, Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation (New York: Viking Press, 1933) p. 3.

4 Stephen Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990) p. 18.

Interesting... I'm against abortion too, but it's not always that easy and it can't always be simplified into killing a human being is wrong, so abortion is wrong. Sometimes people have strong reasons for having an abortion, because having a child is a huge responsiblity, true that most people have sex by choice and therefore they should live up to the results of their actions. Some of those reasons might be that the child has some disease that would kill the child anyway or have him/her live a misrable life, the child may be a result of rape and living as a child who came from such an experience would ruin the child's life. You can't always make 100% moral desisions in life, sometimes you are forced to break rules, because life isn't only black and white... it has some grey areas.

Let's debate, no shouting or yelling but graciousy and calmly.

Answer this question for me please, what is the unborn?

Okay, also if a mother is in a life-threatening situation and is pregnant, let us think about this one. The mother lives but the baby dies. If nothing is done, two lives are lost. One life is better than zero to save.

This would be acceptable to save the mother's life because it differs from abortion.

1. The doctor is doing all he/she can to save two lives and is not purposely attempting to destroy the embryo - whole distinct living being.
2. It is being done in a unavoidable situation and where his/her intentions are to not take a life- but save one.

I believe this is the only circumstance..

Second question. What are examples of pro-choice and anti-choice to you?

Pro-choice: ice cream flavors, what to wear, college majors.

Anti-choice: human slavery, holocaust, abortion.

They say they are pro-choice but they, like Planned Parenthood are not giving the women all of the information and telling them everything that thye can do.

Just because a child has a loss of an arm does that decrease their human value?

This is an interesting topic. I also like how, thus far, no one is jumping down one another's throats but is respectively giving their own opinions and, hopefully, respecting others. I have my own opinions and I try not to judge others unfairly.

Abortion is a sticky subject for me in way. I am pro-choice (not in regards to abortion), but when it comes to abortion I am more pro-life. It has nothing to do with "religious" values as I do not have any. However, there are three instances in which I can understand why a woman would want to get an abortion: A rape, if the child had a disease that would cause it to suffer/die or if her own life was at risk.

However, in the case of a rape, abortion is not the only option. There is also adoption to consider. Who's to say abortion would be the better of the two? It shouldn't be taken lightly. I haven't been raped and I don't know what it feels like, but I don't deny that carry that child around for a short period of time or even the whole 9 months knowing how he/she came to be would be emotionally devastating and likely physically as a result as well. But abortion can be as ~equally~ devastating in much the same ways. An abortion won't lessen the pain or make it obsolete, it likely will just add to it. So why, my question is, would anyone choose to increase their pain? With adoption of course it can be hard to give the child up in the end since it's likely the mother would have some kind of an attachment to the child after having carried him/her around for 9 months, but a person can feel good about it knowing they gave life and gave the child something they couldn't at that time in their life.

When my mother was pregnant with me she became very ill. At 8 months she had to be rushed to the emergency. My pulse was dropping rapidly and my mother was becoming more deathly ill. My mother could have made that choice to get an abortion but she didn't, she told them to do what they had to do to save me. They performed a cesarean and once they had finished took me away to tend to me and had a second team of doctors waiting to tend to my mom. We both made a full recovery, even though the chances for either of us were slim. It makes me happy and proud to know that my mom cared so much for me that she was willing to risk her own life and chose not to just do away with me. Because of that, and because of other struggles in my life I've overcome, I have a deep appreciation for life.

As Bob would say, check the forums, as this has been discussed many times before...

Elizabeth, you are right, we should keep it this way and not shout and yell, but calmly display our opinions/views.

You make a very good point, we sure don't know what it feels like to be in that situation of rape. Completely wasted and like no one is there for us, but we are confronted we so much. It may seem abortion is the only choice out there. But adoption is there, and although many fight that it would be to hard and difficult....There are hundreds of thousands waiting to adopt, but there has been a shortage of babies. So adoption is always there.

I have listened to testimonies and can see the aftermath of abortion, post-abortion depression and thoughts of suicide, nightmares, visions of that child, and many more devasting positions.

Abortion is not all hyped up as it sounds, there are plenty of fallbacks that can injure the mother for life and increase her intake of pain.

"...how come when its us its an abortion but when its a chicken its an omelet??????? Are we better then chickens?"

^ If I had a nickle for every time I've heard that one, haha.

The eggs that we consume are unfertilized eggs. Yet the chicken still lays them just the same. Similarly much like a woman, as she ages, loses hers. It's a ~natural~ process. If you know where I'm getting at (ie. abortion isn't natural).

When does life begin? The question of when human life began has been pondered throughout history and in a multitude of cultural contexts. The "answer" is fluid, in that it has been changing throughout history and among cultures as any "answer" about when human life begins is deeply integrated with the beliefs, values and social constructs of the community or individual. The "answer" is always changing as social contexts change, religious morals fluctuate or new knowledge about the process of embryo development is obtained. Several "answers" I've heard of is that 1) Life begins at conception, and 2) Life doesn't begin at conception but rather grows and develops gradually... What the h--- do you think the baby is doing during those 9 months? If that's not growth or development then I don't know what is.

Speaking of development, what is an embryo? What is a fetus? These terms, embryo and fetus, describe certain stages of human development, much like infant, toddler, teenager and adult which describes further stages of development. Food for thought.

That is a very good point,though I don't remember the pain when the doctor slapped my hind end to stimulate me to breathe, if indeed it happened. The term pro-life was not as popular before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision - 1973
I'm not sure what was in the way of an overturn for thirtyseven years. They did appoint a pro-life president didn't they?

By Scott Klusendorf

Failure to answer this question correctly explains why so many people find pro-life views absurd.

For pro-life advocates, the case we present seems clear and to the point. From the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. True, they have yet to grow and mature, but they are whole human beings nonetheless. Embryology texts affirm this. Keith L. Moore writes: “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”1 At the same time, there is no morally significant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today that would justify killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not relevant in the way that abortion advocates need them to be.

So why do many Americans find this basic pro-life case hard to accept? Philosopher Richard Stith nails the problem. They view the human embryo as something that is constructed rather than something that develops.2

Life begins at conception.

The president we have now? A democrat and one is constructed the Health Care Bill, we will all now does nothing to protect the unborn.

The topic of abortion has always interested me. im a 22 year old female who has been raped by my step father for 5 years. a pregnancy did result. i personally have always been pro-life. i know woman who cant have children that really want them. everyone has there own opinion and feelings on the matter of abortion. what i want to know is this...can we ever truly stop abortions ffrom happening? and about these girls taht have a miscarriage on purpose, should that be/ is that considered legal? is there really a difference?

If you are so pro life, go lock arms and block access to graveyards.

The Obama administration reiterated today that funding for President Obama's health care legislation would only pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk. The circumstances for choices are often callous and cold-hearted. If a grieving husband was to say I lost my wife because the federal goverment, nor I could prevent it, I would not say ; did you look in the closet?

I agree that we do not know for sure how many closet obortions would result in the death of the mother and the child. As a liberal I do look at the government for answers

Choice is not inherently evil yet it is natural to make poor choices whether individual or collective.
Circumstances leading to abortion are always sad.

I believe life is more sacred than choice, it is diificult to put a price on life or choice, though neither are free. My conscience tells me it is always wrong to hold life and death in your hands.Death is far to sinister. I believe that most, if not all, politicians wish that there was never a reason anyone would desire to abort a pregnancy.

A fetus get's a soul at the moment of conception, gets it's heartbeat at/around 14 days,
yet a mind could take a lifetime developing

This is such a church issue, just like the fake issue of gay marriage and should woman be priests and bishops.

I'll wager no one who is against abortion has actually had one. What I see here in this thread, for the most part is a bunch of bleeding hearts with zero life experience of this issue outside what they've read about or seen pictures relating too.

get a grip, get off that high horse and get your nose in the dirt with some real people. Don't be telling me life is precious and childbirth is a miracle. If I had to count the amount of times I've seen parents who should have had abortions dragging around their unwanted and unloved children, hating every minute of it and raising them in such an uncaring way...I'd be a rich man.

I'm not saying Abortion is a good option, it's not...it's totally crap for all concerned and I think it should be the absolute last straw..but it should always be an option for those who have carefully considered their life and choices.

No one has the right to tell a woman what they should do their their body, and anything growing inside and because of it.

You can't make a value judgment on someone else's right to make a decision about their own body, you just can't.

I don't like abortion as birth control any more than you do, but what I'd like even less is a world where the choice of a fully grown, informed and aware adult to not be a parent is taken away.

This, in a world which is overpopulated past breaking point, full of ready made unwanted babies, a large proportion of which will grow up in disgusting poverty and/or harsh and emotionally damaging social institutions. You have to ask yourself, how many children's lives are wrecked because their parents should never have been parents?

I don't "like" abortion, but the choice to have one should never be taken away. I do believe it should be alot harder to have them than it is now, with full psychological assessments and counseling, etc..but you need to think about the consequences of making it illegal.

Illegal abortions in back alleys and dirty clinics.

I don't think anyone could be justified in saying abortion is wrong because the unborn baby, at any stage isn't "alive"...clearly it is, from the moment of conception...even if it's just cells without form to begin with.

The issue of abortion for me comes down to whether or not you believe the baby growing in the mothers body has so many rights, the wishes of the woman who owns the body the baby is growing in are not important enough that her wishes come first.

Would any of you feel comfortable telling a teenage girl "sorry, you must carry that baby for 9 months, go through sickness and pain and massive stress an then give birth to a baby which will go into the social work sysyem, because you don't want it and abortion is illegal"

I hope such a bleak repressive day never comes.

Britt, Iluminati was referring to a post Bob made some time ago in a similar thread where Bob said he would happily kill a doctor that performs abortions....
Does a foetus have conscious thought? At what age does it gain conscious thought? Until it is born it is an extension of the mother via the umbilical cord, so is it a separate entity or interwoven?
Abortion is a hell of a thing and no doubt none of us advocate it. But what of the Mother? What rights do any of us have to determine the destiny of the mother? Western society is founded on the freedom of choice yet so many of you are willing to dictate how the mother should live her life, that a rape victim should carry the pregnancy to term ..That a foetus with a genetic deformity should not be terminated, (of course you're not the one left to care and bring up that child for the rest of your life). Or as sited; a young girl who falls pregnant and is unable to fend for herself and the baby, are you saying a life of hell is better than nothing while you sit on the fence without the consequences...!

What if that mother was to grow up and have a baby later in life when shes better able to care and give that baby a better life, under prolife the second baby would not have been born, and would not have a chance at life

So many scenarios so many anomalies, its just not cut and dried

Which is why choice of the individual is so important, something you as individuals no doubt hold so dear, yet are happy to deprive others of their's

"Which is why choice of the individual is so important, something you as individuals no doubt hold so dear, yet are happy to deprive others of their's"

Well said Nicko me old son, well said.

Reading these supposedly rational arguments by Scott Klusendorf i couldn't help but laugh . i cant be the only person here who noticed the methods he uses to state hes beliefs are more suited to someone like Hitler when he was trying to rile the masses against the Jews. like Hitler he disguises emotive language and hyperbole as logic, he lies through omissions and by implying statements that are obviously false by the way he means them, but not by the exact words he uses . to give it a more modern day context, these are the exact same methods people use to convince suicide bombers of the righteousness of there cause.

firstly he overgeneralizes the word "unborn" to mean anything from the embryos first stage of development to the last day before it is born. he does this despite the fact there are many words to describe the embryos development from day 1 to the last day. and he does this because if he was more precise then even an idiot would be able to see the absurdity of hes argument. because there is blatantly a huge difference between cells that are alive and an organism that has started to take on a life of its own.
lets take an example of someone who cuts hes finger off. by this Scott Klusendorf logic we should then hold him responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of living cells, because he argues there is no difference between a collection of living cells and life itself. now this is obviously BS. just because an embryo is composed of living cells doesn't mean it is alive in the way he tries to make you think of it.
for example that human ear they grew on the back of a rat doesn't have the rights of an alive human being even though it is composed of living tissue, but this guy would make you think it does.

when you get right down to it the only thing that makes a difference between a bunch of living tissue and a human being is the presence of brain functions. now he tries to convince you that this is just an arbitrary choice, that it has no real significance. but then let me ask you. is there any moral argument to keep someone on life support who is obviously brain dead?
or how about if the baby is born brain dead. should we then hook it up to life support and keep it alive the next 50 odd years because it is a living human being? so it isn't hard to see the puerile absurdity of hes arguments if you would stop to think instead of being yanked around by your emotions

and when you come down to it, most of the doctors and countries refuse to do abortions at the stage when the brain has developed somewhat. as even a kid could understand that it is the working brain that makes a difference between a bunch of living tissue and a human being. and at the stage abortions should be carried out there is no brain functions at all, it cant think, it cant feel, it cant move, it is nothing more than living tissue not somehow alive in its own right.

Food for thought:

How did you, those of you who are fathers or mothers, feel when you found out that your wife, girlfriend or other was pregnant or find out that you yourself were pregnant? Did you excitedly tell others that the two of you were having a fetus? Or did you tell them that you were having a baby and that it was a boy, or a girl? Did you describe it as being a "thing" or did you describe it as a living being?

Well you normally wait 12 to 16 weeks before you tell anybody because before that, anything can go wrong with the fetus.

and you say we are having a baby, which means in 9 months time

Why..? whats your point "A figure of speach"..??

"Would any of you feel comfortable telling a teenage girl 'sorry, you must carry that baby for 9 months, go through sickness and pain and massive stress an then give birth to a baby which will go into the social work sysyem' because you don't want it and abortion is illegal..."

^ I wouldn't feel comfortable telling a teenage girl to go get an abortion, risk physical illness (infections, sepsis', etc.) or impairment (recurrent miscarriages, sterility, etc.) and develop serious psychological disorder (depression, insomnia, PTSD, etc.) along with stress, guilt, self-loathing, withdrawal from friends and family. Like any procedure there are risks or side-effects, whether they are minor or severe. Abortion is no exception. From what I've seen, abortion does more harm to a person. Abortion isn't something someone gets over quickly, it something a person carries with them for the rest of their life. No sir, I wouldn't even encourage another human being to get an abortion let alone tell them to. I'm Sweden.