Senator Kaine has no clue what he’s talking about
Article adapted from episode content.
This week, a sitting U.S. Senator uttered remarks so fundamentally misguided and perilous that they have been described as “one of the dumbest and most dangerous and stupidest things” a politician could say. During a U.S. Senate hearing for a nominee to the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Tim Kaine expressed profound discomfort with the foundational American principle that human rights originate from God, our Creator, rather than from government or laws. This stance, far from being a mere political disagreement, threatens to undermine the very bedrock of our Republic’s foundation.
The controversy began when a nominee quoted Senator Marco Rubio, asserting that “Our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our governments”. Senator Kaine found this statement “very, very troubling,” claiming that “the notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the creator… That’s what the Iranian government believes”. He painted a picture of a theocratic regime that bases its rule on religious law and persecutes minorities, implying that grounding rights in a creator is akin to such oppressive systems.
This comparison, however, is a transparent attempt to “poison the well”. It’s a “ploy,” not grounded in rational reason, designed to make it seem as though only “religious fundamentalist[s] who want to trample on the rights of others” would appeal to a transcendent source for rights. Yet, the American system, as conceived by its founders like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, explicitly grounded natural rights in a transcendent source: God. The Declaration of Independence is “very clear that we are endowed by our creator with certain fundamental rights that are not the product of legislation or court cases, what we call positive law”.
Understanding Natural Rights: The American Foundation
Natural rights are those rights individuals possess “in virtue of being human”. They are “prepolitical,” meaning government does not invent them; rather, government’s “job is to recognize and protect them for the sake of the human individual”. To illustrate, consider a U.S. citizen traveling to the United Kingdom. While that individual has no legal right to vote in a British election because they are not a British citizen, they inherently possess a natural right “not to be gunned down in the middle of Trafalgar Square”. This right is not granted by the American or British government but exists “in virtue of [their] humanity,” regardless of nationality.
Pro-lifers, too, invoke this concept when speaking of the “natural rights of the unborn,” arguing that these rights exist “in virtue of being human, not to be unjustly killed”. Senator Kaine’s rejection of this foundational understanding of rights is not just a semantic disagreement; it represents a dangerous departure from the principles upon which the United States was built.
Senator Kaine’s Glaring Inconsistencies
The senator’s position quickly unravels when confronted with his own past statements and actions, revealing a profound lack of consistency.
The Roe v. Wade Contradiction: If, as Senator Kaine suggests, government is the “highest source of authority for our basic human rights,” then a critical problem emerges: “The same government that grants rights can do what? Obviously, take them away”. By this logic, Kaine should have been perfectly content when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 2022. After all, the courts and legislatures, in his framework, are the ultimate authority.
However, the source notes that Senator Kaine was “all over the media along with every other Democrat screaming that women’s fundamental right to an abortion had just been infringed upon”. This outcry directly contradicts his stated principle. If rights emanate solely from the government, then the government’s highest judicial body had merely exercised its authority. Kaine’s complaint, therefore, implicitly appeals to a higher, unenumerated right, undermining his own argument that rights derive purely from statutory law. His anger at the court’s decision, when viewed through his stated worldview, is inexplicable.
The Immigration Paradox: Another significant inconsistency arises from Senator Kaine’s stance on immigration. He has been a vocal critic of policies under the Trump presidency, particularly ICE raids and deportations, claiming they violate the “fundamental rights” of undocumented migrants. Yet, if government is the “highest source of rights,” as his position implies, then the same government that might open borders can also shut them, and the same government that once welcomed can later deport. The question becomes: “Where do those fundamental rights come from?” if they do not originate from a source higher than the government itself?. Kaine’s complaints here again demonstrate a selective invocation of “fundamental rights” when it suits his political agenda, without acknowledging their true, transcendent origin.
Flawed Logic: Disagreement and False Equivalency
Kaine further attempts to dismiss the concept of natural rights by arguing that if people from different religious traditions were to debate natural rights, there would be “significant differences in the definitions”. This, he contends, suggests an arbitrary nature to such rights. This is a common “playbook of relativists who try to make it look like the absence of agreement means nobody is right”. However, the source points out that “the fact that people disagree does not mean there are no right answers”. This argument is “self-refuting”; if disagreement invalidates a position, then Kaine’s own argument is dismissed because others, including a majority of senators like Ted Cruz, disagree with him.
Moreover, Kaine makes a deeply problematic comparison between the God of Christianity and the God of Islam, suggesting they are somehow equivalent religious systems. This “very common tactic on the left” is often seen in movements advocating for “coexist” bumper stickers. While America rightly tolerates religious differences, ignoring the profound theological distinctions is “ridiculous” and “ignorant”.
The Christian worldview posits that “all humans have value because they bear the image of God,” regardless of their religion, politics, development, cognitive abilities, or any other characteristic. This inherent value means Christians are called to love their fellow human beings, even those with whom they disagree, and not to harm them. The “God of Islam,” however, is described as a “very vindictive God, a God who wants to destroy any who oppose him,” commanding followers to wage “jihad” against those who defy Islam. To claim there is “no correlation between the Christian worldview that stresses toleration” and the Islamic worldview is to overlook fundamental theological realities. Therefore, invoking natural rights grounded in a Christian theistic God poses “no threat to the concept of human dignity, human toleration”.
The Dangerous Path of Arbitrary Rights
Senator Kaine’s worldview, if adopted, would inevitably lead to a system where rights are not objective truths but are instead “arbitrarily defined” by government elites. If there is “no natural order, if there is no natural rights that we get in virtue of our humanity objectively, then the government will determine arbitrarily who has rights and who doesn’t”. This means individuals like Kaine and other government officials would decide fundamental aspects of human existence, such as the “right to own property, a right to happiness, a right to pursue your own individual interests, a right to life even”. Such rights would not be inherent but bestowed, subject to removal at governmental whim.
The political left, it is argued, has for decades been “plucking rights out of thin air,” such as a “right to an abortion even though it’s nowhere found in the constitution,” a “right to die,” or a “right to be whatever gender you identify is as”. These purported rights lack any grounding and stand in stark contrast to the founders’ careful limitation of rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which were grounded in a “transcendent creator”.
This erosion of objective, transcendent rights creates a “very dangerous place” where “the same government that feels I am a human being with rights could later feel I’m not a human being with rights”. This ideological push, the source contends, is an attempt to “undermine that [foundational] worldview so he could push his agenda forward about gays, lesbians, um, uh, transgendered individuals having rights that are plucked right out of thin air that have no grounding at all”. Kaine seeks to divorce rights from any “natural order to things” that ought to be valued.
The Self-Refuting “Ought”
Perhaps the most compelling argument against Kaine’s position is its inherent self-refutation. When Senator Kaine states that “we shouldn’t have laws based on religion, we ought to have laws based on the government,” he uses the word “ought”. This very word, however, “invoked the language of natural rights and natural liberties and natural law more specifically”. Moral obligations, such as the idea that laws ought to be a certain way, cannot originate from a purely relativistic, government-centric view.
To make such moral claims, Kaine “has to borrow from the natural law tradition,” which posits that “moral truths are real and knowable and that we can get in line with them and ought to get in line with them”. These truths are “transcendent that come outside of us and our job is to align with them,” not dictate them by preference or political philosophy. His argument, therefore, collapses under its own weight, relying on the very principles it attempts to discredit.
Two Rival Views of Human Value
Ultimately, the debate boils down to “two rival views of the human person in our culture today”. The first is the “endowment view,” held by the founders and “theologically conservative prolifers”. This view asserts that an individual’s rights are “not based on your capabilities” or “immediately exercising visible functions like self-awareness or having uh self-consciousness”. Instead, “your rights are grounded in your human nature,” acquired “the moment you began to exist”. This is the conviction that human value comes from being made in the “image of God”.
The competing view, which Senator Kaine demonstrably holds, particularly in his stance on abortion, is a “performance view of human value”. This perspective suggests that “being human means nothing”. What truly matters is “having cognitive function,” such as “self-awareness, like the ability to feel pain, like having viability, the ability to live independent of another human being”. Until these functions can be “immediately exercise[d],” an individual “has no value that we have to respect,” and therefore, “no right to life, so to speak”.
These “two world views are warring against each other now in the Western world”. Senator Kaine’s rejection of rights grounded in a transcendent creator and his promotion of a government-centric, performance-based view of human value is not merely misguided; it is a dangerous ideology that threatens the inherent dignity of all human beings and the foundational principles of liberty and justice. His arguments reveal not only a profound misunderstanding of America’s philosophical heritage but also a dangerous inconsistency that, if widely adopted, would leave all rights vulnerable to the arbitrary whims of those in power.
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.
This week, a US senator, a sitting US senator, said one of the dumbest and most dangerous and stupidest things I’ve ever heard a politician say. We’ll take a look at what that is in just a minute. Thanks for joining us on The Case for Life program. We’re delighted to have you. Let me remind you again, if you have not gone to our websites and like them, please do. Also, if you would take a look at our course, our pro-life 101 course, which in one week will equip you to defend your pro-life views in a very confused world.
You can find a link to that on our sites, and I hope you’ll take a look at that. Well, this has been an interesting week for a lot of reasons. There’s been a brutal m murder in Charlotte that is just heart-wrenching to think about. But there was something else that happened this week that I think we need to draw our attention to because if we’re not careful, it’s ideas like that expressed by Democrat Tim Kaine in the Senate that threatened to undermine our republic’s foundation.
I’ll give you the background, then we’ll actually go look at the clip. There was a hearing in the US Senate for a seat on the US Foreign Relations Committee and one of the nominees for that position had just quoted Senator Marco Rubio quoting the Declaration of Independence that our fundamental or natural rights come from God, not the government. And we’re going to see where Democrat Tim Kaine takes unbelievable offense at that and thinks it’s a dangerous idea to ground human rights, our basic human rights in the idea of natural rights that are grounded in the concept of a creator.
To just give you a little more background on this, you’ve heard us talk about natural rights on this program before. Natural rights are those rights you have in virtue of being human. Government does not grant these rights. Government’s job according to our founders Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the other founders of our nation. Natural rights are those rights you have that are prepolitical. Meaning government doesn’t invent them. Government’s job is to recognize and protect them for the sake of the human individual.
That’s the idea of natural rights. Now, where do we ground these natural rights? Well, our founders, as we see in the Declaration of Independence, grounded our natural rights in a trans a transcendent source, God. And they were unclear about that. They were very clear that we are endowed by our creator with certain fundamental rights that are not the product of legislation or court cases, what we call positive law. So in the American system, there are really two sources for law and rights.
The first is what we call endowed rights or natural rights that flow to us as humans simply because we’re human beings. I’ve used this example before, but it’ll help explain it again. If I travel to a foreign nation, let’s just say the United Kingdom, I do not have a legal right to vote in that nation’s next election. Though I might want to, I can’t. Why? For the very simple reason I’m not a British citizen. And the government of the United Kingdom has determined that only British citizens vote in a British election.
Entirely fair. But I do have a natural right not to be gunned down in the middle of Trfalgar Square when I visit London. That natural right is not a right I get because it’s granted to me by the American or the British government. Rather, it’s a natural right I have in virtue of my humanity. It doesn’t matter your nationality. You can be from Bangladesh. You could be from Vietnam. You could be from Canada, from the US, Mexico. Does not matter. Even though you’re not having a right to vote in that nation, if you’re a foreign tourist, you certainly have a natural right not to be unjustly killed in the middle of the city.
That’s what we mean by natural rights. And when proifers speak about a right to life, we are referencing the natural rights of the unborn, those rights they have in virtue of being human, not to be unjustly killed. Well, Senator Kaine is going to make a rather outlandish claim about natural rights. I’ll let you see it for yourself. Let’s go to the clip.
Chair, Mr. Barnes, I was struck by your opening comments and I asked to get a copy of them so I could read them and make sure I quoted them correctly. You state, and this is a quote from Secretary Rubio, “Our rights come from God, our creator, not from our laws, not from our government.” I find that very, very troubling. I’m a devout person. I was a missionary in Honduras. We’ve got other devout folks in this room, Christian, Jewish, Muslim American. The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the creator.
That’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahigh, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator.
All right, let’s stop right there. The senator is doing two things. First, he’s trying to poison the well by saying the only people that appeal to natural rights being grounded in a transcendent creator are those who are vicious terrorists like the Iranian moolas, for example. All right, look, this is a nice trick, but it’s a ploy. It is not grounded in any sense of rational reason at all. The senator here is simply trying to make it look like only a religious fundamentalist who wants to trample on the rights of others would appeal to a transcendent source for natural rights.
But there’s something else going on here as well. Notice what the senator said. He said that there are all kinds of other religions out there. There’s Buddhists, there’s Islamic religious people, there’s Christian religious people, there’s Jewish religious people. And as you’ll see in a moment, he’s going to make the argument that if you put them all in a room, they would probably disagree on what natural rights are. Well, this makes no sense at all. The fact that people disagree does not mean there are no right answers.
This is a very typical play that we see in the playbook of relativists who try to make it look like the absence of agreement means nobody is right. That is not a good argument at all. But I found something else interesting here. The senator is not consistent with his own view. The senator said that he was deeply troubled by the notion that our basic rights come from God, what we call natural rights, rather than a body of law, meaning the courts or, for example, a state or federal legislature.
Well, let’s think about this for a moment. If the highest source of authority for our basic human rights is the government, here’s the problem for Senator Kaine. The same government that grants rights can do what? Obviously take them away. So here’s my question for Senator Kaine. Why did you complain when the Supreme Court struck down Roie Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey in 2022? The senator was all over the media along with every other Democrat screaming that women’s fundamental right to an abortion had just been infringed upon by the court by the court saying there was no explicit right to an abortion in the constitution.
Well, if the senator was being consistent with his own principles, the idea that our rights come from government or the courts rather than a transcendent God, he should have been happy that the court reversed Row and Casey. After all, the courts and the state houses and the Congress are the highest authority there is. He should have been glad that they acted the way they did. He might not have liked it in the sense that it hurts his precious right to an abortion, but he shouldn’t be complaining.
At a minimum, he should not be complaining that the court act wrongly. But of course, he does believe the court act wrongly. But on what basis? The same court that granted a right to an abortion with Roie Wade in 1973 can take it away in 2022. That’s what follows from the idea that there’s no higher authority for grounding our rights than statutory law. All right, but there’s more problems here. Let me point out another inconsistency. Senator Kaine has been one of those complaining that ICE raids into neighborhoods where there are illegal aliens, these are illegal migrants who invaded the US illegally, came here without going through the proper channels.
And as you know, we’ve seen a lot of footage of ICE agents rounding up these illegal aliens and putting them on planes and deporting them to the countries of their origins. All right. Whatever you think about that, that’s your business. I’m in favor of it because I think our laws need to have force behind them. We either believe them or we don’t. But let’s look at another inconsistency on the senator’s point here. The senator thinks that the fundamental rights of these migrants are being violated by Trump presidency policies that say we’re going to we’re going to deport people who are not here legally.
All right. Well, wait a minute. He then says when we deport them, we’re violating their fundamental rights. But wait a minute, Senator, if government is the highest source of rights, why are you complaining that these migrants are being wronged by having their fundamental rights violated? Where do those fundamental rights come from? If they come only from the government, the same government that opened the border can now shut it. And the same government that once welcomed wholesale people to invade our country illegally can now deport them.
Who are you to judge and who are you to be upset about this? So, there’s a lot of inconsistency going on here that is really problematic. But I think there’s something else here I want to add as well. Notice how he tried to compare the God of Christianity with a God of Islam. As if the two religious systems are the same. Again, this is a very common tactic on the left. You see it in the bumper sticker that says coexist. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?
The bumper sticker that has all the little symbols of the world’s major religions on it and it says coexist. Now, we don’t need a coexist bumper sticker in the States. Here’s why. You don’t get killed for believing the wrong thing. Hopefully, nobody’s ever going to show up at your door and say, “Agree with me on religion,” or I shoot you in the head. Only a fanatic would do that. The senator’s right, I suppose, about that. But here’s the thing. In America, we tolerate differences of religion.
And indeed, there are differences in the religious traditions that the senator mentioned. On a Christian worldview, all humans have value because they bear the image of God. They bear that image. Whether they’re Islamic, Christian, whether they are Jewish, secular, atheist, whether they are politically of the left or politically of the right, it does not matter. Your value as a human being is not based on your development, your cognitive abilities, your political affiliations, your religious identifications, your gender, body size, or any of that.
Rather you have value simply because you bear the image of your maker. That’s what we called an in call an endowed view of humanity. Islam does not hold that view. The God of Islam is not a loving God that can be personally known. He’s a very vindictive God. A God who wants to destroy any who oppose him and do so right now, not just at a final judgment, but do so now and commands his followers to produce a war against those who disagree with Islam.
That’s the whole concept of jihad. All right. Now, look, there is no correlation between the Christian worldview that stresses toleration. As a Christian, I don’t go kill those who disagree with me, including Senator Kaine. I may not like it. I will argue against him. I will do all I can to defeat his party politically, as I believe biblically grounded Christians should, but I don’t want him to be personally harmed. I speak no ill will against him personally. I would want the same laws that protect him to protect me.
And therefore I care what happens to him. So I don’t want him harmed on Islam. You can wish harm on those who defy Allah. So for him to compare the two together is just ridiculous. And it’s what we see often on the political left where they take religious views and pretend they’re all the same. They mix them together in one stew of equivalency and pretend there’s no difference. Well, there is a big difference. The God of the Bible, the Christian God, has in his character love for his creation.
And because he loves his creation, his followers should love what he has created. And that includes our fellow human beings, even those we might disagree with. So there’s no threat to the concept of human dignity, human toleration by invoking natural rights grounded in a Christian theistic God. The senator is just wrong about that because the Islamic worldview and the Christian worldview are nowhere near the same. They may both be wrong, but to claim they’re both equally right and have no distinction is just ignorant beyond anything I can imagine.
Now, the other thing here that I think you want to watch is see how the senator very cleverly tried to make it sound like he was the one who really believed in natural rights. He claimed to be very devout. He said, “I’m a very devout man.” He wants everybody to know he’s a man of faith. But look, it being devout does not make you right. And secondly, just because you use religious terminology does not mean you’ve mastered the moral and theological views of the tradition you claim to be part of.
Now, I know from previous things I’ve heard the senator say, he more or less identifies as Catholic, but he does not hold to the worldview of the Catholic Church, which opposes things like abortion, opposes things like treating human beings as instruments. The Catholic Church in its catechism and in its moral theology teaches the same that Protestant Christians believe that human beings have value because they bear the image of God. Their value is not based on their performance. It’s based on their being endowed by their creator with value.
That worldview is something utterly foreign to the senator. And what I think was going on here was an attempt to undermine that worldview. So he could push his agenda forward about gays, lesbians, transgendered individuals having rights that are plucked right out of thin air that have no grounding at all. And he wants to get away from any kind of foundation that might say, well, wait a minute, there’s a natural order to things that we ought to value. Now, let’s go on and see what else he has to say.
So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling. I think the motto over the Supreme Court is equal justice under law. The oath that you and I take pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not arbitrarily defined natural rights.
Okay, he speaks about not arbitrarily defining rights, but that’s exactly what his worldview will result in. If there is no natural order, if there is no natural rights that we get in virtue of our humanity objectively, then the government will determine arbitrarily who has rights and who doesn’t. Meaning people like Senator Kaine will decide if you have a right to own property, a right to happiness, a right to pursue your own individual interests, a right to life even. It won’t be something you have in virtue of your nature as a human being.
It will be something you only have because he and government elites decide you have it. I find that troubling. But there’s something else. The senator’s argument is is in my view self-refuting. The minute you say we ought to have laws based on X, or you say there ought to be a law about X, a given subject, you have just invoked the language of natural rights and natural liberties and natural law more specifically because you use the word ought. You’re saying we shouldn’t have laws based on religion.
We ought to have laws based on the government. Well, wait a minute. Where did that moral obligation come from? In other words, he has to borrow from the natural law tradition to even get his claim off the ground that says we ought to respect the legal order over the so-called natural rights theistic order. If he’s going to make those kinds of moral claims, he can only do so by invoking principles from the natural law tradition. The idea that moral truths are real and knowable and that we can get in line with them and ought to get in line with them.
They’re not things we make up. They’re not things we dictate according to preference or political philosophy. Rather, they are truths that are transcendent that come outside of us. And our job is to align with them. Well, he can’t make those kinds of claims without invoking a natural law tradition. Let’s see what else he has to say. I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.
Okay, I mentioned this earlier. Here we go. He’s going to invoke this idea that people disagree, therefore nobody can be right. Now again, his own claim here is selfrefuting because I disagree with Senator Kaine. Does that mean his argument now is refuted and we can just dismiss it because people disagree with it? In fact, I’m not the only one who would disagree with it. I know for a fact that a majority of senators would disagree with it. We already have seen Ted Cruz and other senators speak out against what Senator Kaine said here.
So obviously even in his own legislative body, the US Senate, there are people who disagree with him. So if disagreement means nobody’s right, the senator isn’t right and we can dismiss his view as being a mere conjecture of his own opinion. Let’s see if he has anything else to add here. You go on to say, “I believe our country and our government is the best in the world and our strength comes from our enduring values. I believe that.” But then you say, and you got to choose what to say in your opening testimony.
These values aren’t an endless list of quote rights. You put the quote around that to kind of demean the notion of rights that people create and change and form to meet their own needs or desires. These values aren’t identity politics. They’re the historic natural rights that we have as individuals pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in the world. Actually, what the nominee was saying here is spoton. The nominee was saying, look, by natural rights, we do not mean things that people pluck out of thin air.
For example, the right to die movement says over and over again that people have a right to dignity, by which they mean a right to die. And by that right to die, they mean that doctors have to help them commit suicide. Medical personnel need to be available to help them commit suicide if they want to. And by right, what they really mean is I have a desire to die, therefore I have a right to die or I desire to be a woman even though my body says I’m a man.
Therefore, you will recognize my right to be a woman. And the nominee was correct to say by rights, by natural rights, we mean fundamental things that our founders spoke of, not just any whim that somebody plucks out of thin air. If you think about the political left for the last four decades, they have been about the business of plucking rights out of thin air. You have a right to an abortion, even though it’s nowhere found in the Constitution. You have a right to die.
You can commit suicide or seek aid in dying if you need it from medical staff. You have a right to be whatever gender you identify is as and we will prosecute people who misgender you. You have a right to decide for yourself what moral systems you will follow. These are things people are just plucking out of thin air. They don’t have any grounding. When our founders spoke of foundational rights or endowed rights, notice how careful they were to first of all limit these rights to certain things like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
All of which the left disregards and disavows today. They were very careful to ground where those rights come from. They come from a transcendent creator. And what I think is happening here with Senator Kaine is not him just being flippantly divisive, though I think you could be forgiven if you think that. I think he is trying to put a premise out there in the culture that natural rights are dangerous so that this country adopts the different model that he espouses that rights are whatever you feel they are.
Which means there are no rights that are safe for anybody because the same government that feels I am a human being with rights could later feel I’m not a human being with rights. That’s a very dangerous place for us to be. We’re going to take a break. When we come back, I’m going to talk about how the natural rights debate specifically plays out in two rival views of human value and why as pro-life Christians we need to be attuned to that.
Welcome back everyone. If you want to learn more about natural rights, I say a lot about it in my book, The Case for Life, which you can pick up at Amazon or wherever you wish. I said it before the break, we needed to talk about abortion and how it relates to natural rights. There are two rival views of the human person in our culture today. The first view is the view of our founders and the view of theologically conservative pro-lifers. We call it the endowment view.
And that view says your rights are not based on your capabilities, your immediately exercisable functions like self-awareness or having self-consciousness. Rather, your rights are grounded in your human nature. And when did you get that human nature? The moment you began to exist. The competing view, which Senator Kaine holds to, we know this from his views on abortion, is a performance view of human value that says you’re not valuable simply because you’re human. In fact, being human means nothing. It’s nothing special at all.
What matters is having cognitive function like self-awareness, like the ability to feel pain, like having viability, the ability to live independent of another human being. And until you can immediately exercise those functions, you have no value that we have to respect. You have no right to life, so to speak. These two worldviews are waring against each other now in the Western world. And pro-life Christians better be equipped to defend an endowment view of human value. An endowment view that says our value comes from our human nature which is made in the image of God, not some functions that we perform.
It’s vital you are skilled at defending that endowment worldview. Again, I want to remind you that our short course, Prolife 101, can help you do that in just a week’s time. I hope you’ll take advantage of that. Till next time, let’s ground human value and human dignity in a transcendent God.