Nov
15
2009
The Pro-Life Two-Step
When thinking through the logic of life, it’s always good to get some good fog-clearing advice.
For example, Alan Shlemon recently gave a defense of the pro-life position at Central Michigan University and he focused on just two claims:
(1) the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being from the moment of conception;
(2) abortion is discrimination: it disqualifies a group of human beings (the unborn) from being valuable because of an arbitrary quality or characteristic.
He then fielded objections from the audience. The vast majority of objections against the pro-life view, he says, come in one of two forms.
They either assume the unborn is not a human being.
Or, they disqualify the unborn from being a valuable human being based on an arbitrary quality or characteristic.
When I hear a defense for abortion, I figure out which category it falls in.
Then, I can show them the misstep by appealing to one of the two claims I defended in my opening remarks.
12 Comments
I hope we (Evangelicals) will eventually embrace a more robust theology of pro-life that INCLUDES, but is not LIMITED TO, abortion.
Surely the hope is to PRECLUDE abortion with maybe the one exception being if the mother would definitely die if not performed.
Who says we haven’t Samuel? Just because one cares deeply about the murder of millions of babies every year does not imply in anyway they are also not committed to the well being of all humans.
“Or, they disqualify the unborn from being a valuable human being based on an arbitrary quality or characteristic.”
“A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United States with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated.” -Wikipedia
Sarah Palin is in the 9-7% of beautiful women who brought their baby into the world. Lord bless her.
Good post. Keep the good posts coming on abortion. You are making an impact I believe. Roe vs. Wade shall be overturned, if we continue to pray and speak the truth with compassion. The Gospel has to always be the main reason we speak out against abortion, and it is here, and i thank the Lord for this excellent blog that keeps fighting the good fight of faith.
“(1) the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being from the moment of conception”
Barack Obama has said that healthcare is a right due every single person. If (1) if true, he is bound to protect these babies.
Samuel, I hope you don’t, like far too many, equate “pro-life but is not LIMITED TO, abortion” with welfare. That’s a all too common mistake that ignores the fact that conservatives have good biblical and experiential reasons to oppose liberal approaches to helping the poor.
This jives with my experience discussing the topic with friends and associates. However, my experience has also led me to a third common argument they fall back on when they fail to defend either or both of the two presented by Shlemon. (I didn’t say they gave up believing in these false ideas, they just gave up defending them.)
Essentially, they fall back on an bald-faced emotional statement, “I just think people should be able to get abortions.” Once I’ve reached that point, I’ve tried to argue further, but, in general, things just go round and round after that.
Trying to argue with a sinner about the sinful desires is good, but at some point we have to realize that the blind willfully seek the darkness. Unless the Holy Spirit moves them, fools do not wish to see the light of Christ.
[...] the image is not why God loves us So I hear this reported from Alan Shlemon (via: JT) who recently gave a defense of the pro-life position at Central Michigan University and he focused [...]
Is the audio or video of this even available anywhere online?
Travis, there may be a video up soon–we have to see how the quality turned out. But we do have the audio for some similar, previously recorded events of other speakers from our organization. You can find one of those here: http://tinyurl.com/yhm4pta.
(Here’s the link again–it doesn’t work with the period at the end: http://tinyurl.com/yhm4pta)
I agree with Alan’s project entirely, but I’m coming to see that the pro-life arguments are too one-sided toward saving the baby. There should be no decrease in this emphasis, but there needs to be an exponentially stronger case made that abortion hurts the mother as well. Pro-abortion advocates tend to set the mother’s needs off against the baby’s, the baby’s who can’t be seen. So, we need to take seriously the mass-production nature of the abortion mills out there, the criminal neglect that abortion providers have toward women, and the fact that some 80% of women who have abortions would like to have been talked out of it, if only there had been someone to talk them out of it. We have for too long now ceded the mother to the pro-choice side, and we need to stop this. We need to press home the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual devastation and ruin that comes to women who have abortions, often under great duress.